Kings and gods of egypt

wae lta pe siete seaptate

ee

47:

Dats

ar

Stree

hearers
tae) ite

eyes

Bog

sire yas

iatetal

By Alexandre Moret

In the Time of the Pharaohs
Kings and Gods of Egypt

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2022 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

ae :
=

https //archive.org/details/kingsgodsofegypt0000alex

t

Hatshopsitu.
(Davis, The Tomb of Hatshopsitu, p. 22).

Plate I.

KINGS AND GODS
OF EGYPT’

BY

ALEXANDRE MORET

SUB-DIRECTOR OF THE MUSEE GUIMET
PROFESSOR OF EGYPTOLOGY IN L’ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES (PARIS)
AUTHOR OF “IN THE TIME OF THE PHARAOHS,” ETC.

TRANSLATED BY

MADAME MORET

WITH 36 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

The Knickerbocker Press
1912

GEORGE E.MAYCOCK

CopyrRIGHT, 1912
BY

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

The Rnickerbocker Press, Rew Work

PREFACE

THE favourable reception given to my previous
volume, In the Time of the Pharaohs, has encouraged
me to continue my task of presenting the subject
of Egyptology in popular form. The present
essays were originally delivered as lectures before
a cultured audience in the Musée Guimet, or
written for the readers of the Revue de Paris.
Although as yet the results of the scholars’

labours in Eastern fields have not become part
of the general knowledge of the educated classes,
or even of the schools and of the historians, there
is in the public mind a growing interest in the
discoveries made in Eastern history and art, and
also an increasing demand for first-hand informa-
tion presented, in non-technical language, by the .
specialists themselves. I have tried to meet the
requirements of the thoughtful reader as well as
the need of the busy student who has insufficient
time to extend his reading and to gather for him-

self the scattered facts necessary to bring his
iii

iv Preface

knowledge up to date. After selecting subjects
of interest I have considered these, in monographs,
as exhaustively as the state of our present know-
ledge permits, though in a form more easily to be
assimilated than the formal scholarly dissertation.
While summing up the fixed points, I have pointed
out certain questions that still remain unsettled,
and in numerous footnotes and references I have
directed the attention of the reader to the sources
of information and to the discussions and compari-
sons of various investigations, thus securing for
him a glimpse into the laboratory of research work.

My warmest thanks are extended to my wife,
who has prepared the translation, and also to our
common friend, Mrs. Alfred Graveson, for her
kind assistance in the work of the translator.
It gives me great pleasure also to acknowledge my
indebtedness to my publishers of the English
version, whose careful attention to all details of
typography and of illustration has resulted in
securing for the volume an attractive and artistic
appearance.

A. M.

Paris, February, 1912.

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER I

THE QUEEN HATSHOPSITU AND HER TEMPLE
OF DEIR-EL-BAHARI : ; = , I

CHAPTER II

Tur RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF AMENOPHISIV 41

CHAPTER III

THE PAssION OF OSIRIS 5 ‘ e , og

CHAPTER IV

Tue IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL AND MorAL

RETRIBUTION THROUGH THE AGES . J 109
CHAPTER V

THE Mysteries OF Isis : . : . wI48
CHAPTER VI

SoME LEGENDARY TRAVELS OF THE EGYPTIANS
IN AsIA ; : F 3 ; eS

CHAPTER VII

HoMER AND EGYPT ; F ‘ . Ae:

vi Contents
PAGE
CHAPTER VIII
THE READING OF HIEROGLYPHICS . 2 . 250
INDEX 5 A 2os

PLATE I.

PLATE II.
ib.
ii.

PLATE ITI.

PLATE IV.

PLATE V.

PrATe. V1:
if.

It:
III.

PLATE VII. .-

i:

PLATES

HATSHOPSITU . . Frontispiece

The Great Temple at Deir-el-Bahari
The Incense Trees of Punt

DEIR-EL-BAHARI. THE UNFINISHED
PORTICO .

DEIR-EL-BAHARI. ENTRANCE TO THE
SUBTERRANEAN SANCTUARIES .

DEIR-EL-BAHARI. ENTRANCE TO
ANUBIS CHAPEL

Senmout, the Architect of Deir-el-
Bahari

Torso of Young Girl

A Daughter of Khounaton

Amenophis [V—Khounaton
Painted Pavement from the Palace
of El-Amarna
vii

FACING
PAGE

14

22

30

42

50

vill Illustrations

PuiaTE VIII. : ‘ : : :
I. Amenophis IV when Young, and
His Wife
II. Khounaton in Later Years, and
His Family
PriaTE IX.

I. Osiris, Lord of the Occident
II. Isis, the Divine Mother

PLATE X. FUNERAL VIGIL OF OSIRIS—OUNNE-
FER DEAD

PLATE XI. THE DEAD RESURRECTED IN THE
FORM OF A SPROUTING OSIRIS

PLATE XII. Osiris ADORED By JUSTICE—
ErutH. (Mair.)

PLATE XIII. AREA, CELLA, MEGARUM IN THE
TEMPLE OF IstIs aT POMPEII

PLaTE XIV. Roman Isis

PLATE XV. IstIAQuUES CARRYING THE HypRIA-
VESSEL, THE VESSEL IN THE
FORM OF A WOMAN’s BREAST
AND THE SPRINKLER
PLATE XVI. s i , : ;
I. High Priest Offering the Holy
Water to the Isiaques
II. Pantomime in the Isiaque Cult

FACING
PAGE

66

72

80

96

140

154

162

178
194

Mar . : A : ‘ F : At End

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

PLAN OF THE TEMPLE AT DEIR-EL-BAHARI
AMON-RA AND THE QUEEN

BIRTH OF THE PHARAOH

ENTHRONEMENT OF THE PHARAOH

A VILLAGE IN THE LAND OF PUNT

Tue Cuier ParigU AND His WIFE ATI

Ists AND NEPHTHYS FASHIONING AND RESUSCI-
TATING OsIRIS

Four IMaGEs OF OsirRIs’s TOMB (SEE RECTO-
PAGE)

PomPEIAN Isis IN THE TEMPLE OF PoMPEII
PLOUGHING AND HARVEST (XVIIItTH DyNasTY)

THE GOAT’S-SKIN AND THE Man DRINKING
FROM IT

THE MAN BRINGING A GOBLET (VIru Dynasty)
Harvesters (XVIIITH Dynasty)

HARVESTERS AND GLEANING GIRLS (XVIITH
Dynasty)

164.

234

235
235
236

236

x Illustrations

SHEAF-BINDERS (VTH DyNASTY)

Tue MaAsTER OVERSEEING THE LABOURERS

REAPERS (VTH DyYNASTY)

VINTAGE (BETWEEN FISHING AND FOWLING

XVIIItaH Dynasty) .

VINTAGE AND GAMES

ATTACK OF THE BULL BY THE LION (VTH

DyNAsTyY)

PAGE

237
237
238

241

242

246

KINGS AND GODS OF EGYPT

Kings and Gods of Egypt

CHAPTER I

THE QUEEN HATSHOPSITU AND HER TEMPLE OF
DEIR-EL-BAHAR

DEIR-EL-BAHARI, “the Convent _of the North! es
The Arab name conjures up only the vision of a”
Coptic monastery, built by Christian congrega-
tions on the north-west confines of Thebes of the
Hundred Gates—in the very heart of what is for
the archeologists one of the grandest sites in the
world. But the excavations of Mariette, and more
especially those made under the supervision of M.
Naville from 1894-1905," have caused all trace of
these Coptic ruins to vanish. The gaze of the
visitor no longer wanders over a picturesque but

squalid jumble of towers, vaults, and cells, whose

1Ed. Naville, Deir-el-Bahari, vol. 7 of The Egyptian Explora-
tion Fund, 1894-1908; Davis and Naville, The Tomb of Hat-

shopsitu, 1906.

2 Kings and Gods of Egypt

walls of mud and brick are crumbling in decay.
To-day, beneath a glittering and luminous sky,
there stand revealed a series of vast terraces and
the broken ranks of white colonnades—all that
remain to us of a temple of the XVIIIth dynasty,
called by the Egyptians “‘>,. Zeser Zeserou,

“the Sublime of the Sublime.”’

It is one of the ‘most interesting temples of
ancient Egypt, and that, primarily, by reason of
its antiquity. If we except the eastern chapels
of the Pyramids of the Ancient Empire, and the
Temple of the Sun, built by King Ousirniri at
Abousir, of which monuments practically only the
substructures remain, it is at Deir-el-Bahari that,
thus far, have been found the oldest Egyptian
temples; the Sublime, built about 1500 B.c., by
Queen Hatshopsitu, and another sanctuary, older .
still by six hundred years, discovered in 1907, by
M. Naville on the left side of the Sublime, for
which it may have served asa model. The older
structure, dating back to King Mentouhetep II,
has, however, been so defaced by the ravages of
time and the injuries of man that it will not
bear comparison with the later temple of Queen
Hatshopsitu.

This temple has a length of 750 feet and is built

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 3

against a cliff of the Libyan range, which at this
point assumes the form of a semicircle, of which
the northern and western arcs are honeycombed
with hypogea—chambers sunk deep into the earth.
The rocky ground at the foot of the cliff slopes
gradually to the plain. The architect Senmout,
who designed this monument, might have levelled
and raised this slope into an artificial platform
whereon to rear the form of temple traditional in
Egypt, with pylons, colonnaded courts, hypostyle
halls, and a sanctuary, such as are to be seen else-
where in this region—in Gournah, Medinet-Habou,
and the Ramesseum. But Senmout preferred to
avail himself of the successive elevations of the
sloping site, and therefore produced an edifice of
an entirely original order, and one which was
unique in Egypt eS ICTR UT ee
tic feature is a broad central incline which rises
in a gentle grade from the plain to the Libyan hill.
The idea is borrowed from the funeral chapels of
the Ancient Empire. A lane of sphinxes, of
which but a few remain, leads the visitor to the
gate of the outer wall. Beyond the pylon, he
finds himself in a vast court, stretching to right
and left of the central incline. In the background
behind a double row of pillars—those in the front
rectangular in shape, those at the back cylindrical

oM

4 Kings and Gods of Egypt

—rises a stately wall of fine, white, shining lime-
stone. This is the first terrace and the outer
court of the temple. Beyond it, the ground rises
fifty feet, forming a second terrace on which is
built a second court, likewise surrounded by a
white wall with a double row of pillars—all rect-
angular. Here, however, the right (north) side
of the court has the additional adornment of an
unfinished colonnade, and at the end of each side
wall there rise two small temples, complete with
vestibule, hypostyle hall, and sanctuary. That
on the left was dedicated to Hathor, that on the

right to Anubis, The central iicline leads to still
‘ another and higher terrace, enclosed by a colon-

nade with a granite door, which forms the entrance
to a vestibule built against the mountain-side and
leading to the Holy of Holies, hewn in the rock
(Plate IV). On either side of the highest terrace
a space was reserved: the one on the left, a hall of

offerings for the worship of the queen; the one on

the right, a court with an altar dedicated to the
god Ra-Harmakhis (Fig. 1).

Such, in broad outline, is the plan of this temple.

Whereas all others are characterised by a succes-
sion of halls, either covered or open, each one
forming, as it were, a screen to intercept our view
of the one beyond, here, on the contrary, we have

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 5

three successive terraces, their porticoes and col-
onnades showing afar off all the details of their
superposed structures. There obtrude upon the
eye no pylons of colossal height, no hypostyle halls

with ponderous ceilings and gigantic columns;

: ‘<>
Ka) f) TeMPLs oF

* OFM EL BAHAR =

-s SIzts-BYE Vinw-
pe wesTea5D
, es

sg CO er 73
Sia

Fic. 1.—Plan of the Temple of Deir-el-Bahari, after Clarke.
(Ed. Naville, Deir-el-Bahari, vi, pl. 169.)

light is harmoniously distributed over the whole
structure; and there are more open spaces than in
other temples. All the parts, being terraced, are
visible at a glance. Moreover, as the develop-
ment of the colonnades makes for breadth rather
than height, the necessity for huge blocks of stone

6 Kings and Gods of Egypt

is obviated, and the choicest material could be
employed. The visible parts are, consequently,
built of limestone of finest texture and the most
dazzling whiteness, from which the red and blue
paintings stand out in bold relief. The colonnades
with their rectangular, hexagonal, or sixteen-
sided columns are artistically suited to the posi-
tions they occupy and to their place in the general
scheme of the structure. All the dimensions are
balanced and harmoniously proportioned, all the
decoration is sober and restrained. The pillars
bear resemblance to Doric columns, to which, in
fact, they have been compared (Plate II). There
is no trace here of that colossal and exaggerated
style that often spoils the temples of the Rames-
side dynasties. It has often been stated that it
was the Greeks who first understood the art of
building peripteral edifices with external colon-
nades, whereas, on the contrary, the Egyptians
were master-builders of monuments of colossal
scale, with majestic pillars, ponderous capitals,
and gigantic architraves. T his example of the
Sublime is evidence that, previous to the Greeks
the Egyptians fully appreciated the delicate and
harmonious grace of the peristyle. But it must
be confessed that the architect Senmout had no
disciples, and that after him Egypt furnishes

-el-Bahari.

at Deir

emple

ye ab

The Grea

te

The Incense Trees of Punt

int

253)-

,p-

II

Plate II.

Ut)

Hist

(Maspero,

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 7

scarcely another example of porticoes such as
are found at Deir-el-Bahari (Plate V).

Another characteristic of the work of this
innovator was to bring landscape-gardening within
his architectural scheme, obtaining thereby effects
of verdure rare in Egypt. For special reasons
(which will be explained later), i Z
regarded as a kind of Garden of Eden for gods and
kings. Therefore iis wide terraces and the length
~of its outer wall were planted with incense trees,
brought at great expense, from the distant country
of Punt. As may be imagined, nothing remains
of these gardens save the stone basins pierced
with drainage-holes, which were built into the
ground and filled with soil to receive the trans-
planted incense trees. But if the verdure has
perished, there remains, engraved for all time upon
the bas-reliefs of the terrace, a tracery of these little
trees with their short-stalked, crowded foliage
(Plate II, 2). To-day the terraces are dismantled,
no odorous foliage affords them grateful shade,
yet our hearts beat with emotion as we gaze upon
their pure and gracious outlines, standing forth
sharp and clear against that Libyan cliff, which
rises perpendicular for four hundred feet and daz-
zles with a burnished brilliancy, under a glow-
ing sun. What glory must have enveloped it in

8 Kings and Gods of Egypt

times of yore, this temple of Hatshopsitu, with its
‘‘oardens of Amon”’ breathing forth sweet odours
upon the murmuring breeze, throbbing their notes
of green and gold into the symphony of colours,
through which flashed the piercing white of the
pillars, the deep tones of the paintings, and the re-
verberant russet of the rock, beneath a triumphant
sky of fathomless blue!

Hitherto we have been concerned solely with the
external appearance of the temple. In the por-
ticoes and buildings adjoining it, we find bas-
reliefs, from which we learn that it was constructed
about 1500 B.c., by a woman, Queen Hatshopsitu,
a daughter of Thotmes I of the XVIIIth dynasty,
the conqueror of the Syrian provinces. The
period is the most glorious in the history of Egypt.
Victorious over her invaders, the Hyksos, Egypt
in her turn makes conquests outside her own
territory, carrying her sword and her civilisation
into Nubia and Asia, as far as the banks of the
Euphrates. If only because it dates from this
brilliant epoch this temple would have interest for
us. But it has, in addition, a greater claim upon
our attention. Its inscriptions reveal shaver
belongs to the class of funeral temples, and that it
served as a chapel to the tomb of Queen Hatshop-

.

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 9

situ. ‘The tomb was discovered quite recently, by
Mr. Davis, in the depths of the cliff. Although
officially dedicated to Amon-Ra and his companion
gods, Hathor and Anubis, the real divinity, whose
lory ‘the temple was emora
was the Oueen herself. The most ens
“pictures and Tongestthscriptions are, therefore,
devoted to an account of the life of the Queen, to
the description of her birth, coronation, and the
most memorable event of her reign—an expedition
to the land of Punt, whence were brought the
incense trees planted on the terraces. Other
monuments,—two obelisks and a sanctuary in the
great temple of Karnak, also an inscription in a
chapel of Stabel-Antar,—have thrown some light
upon the glorious reign of Queen Hatshopsitu, but
Deir-el-Bahari is in relation to her what the tem-
ples of Abydos and Gournah are to Seti 1; what the
Ramesseum is to Ramses I, and Medinet-Habou
to Ramses III —the place selected to commemorate
the life and might of the Pharaoh. But in this
case the Pharaoh of Deir-el-Bahari happens to be
a woman. In the long line of sovereigns who ruled
Egypt for over four thousand years, Ue women
will appear who governed independent ir
own right, but the first of whom we have ae
is Hatshopsita, the first queetl in history. Hence,

{3
N

10 Kings and Gods of Egypt

apart from its artistic interest, Deir-el-Bahari is of
inestimable worth as a source of information upon
one of the most curious figures of the Pharaonic
civilisation.

Strange, to say, in spite of her long reign of over
twenty years and the imperishable monuments
that reign bequeathed to us, we search in vain for
the name of Hatshopsitu upon the official tables
Dou Egypuan kings ees at Abydos or Sak-

: yrus, or drawn
up ae Manetho. The Pharaohs seem to have
expunged her name from their chronological
records; the state archives ignore her, merely
Stating that—Fhotmes I, father of Hatshopsitu,
was sucioced byt oases II
and Thotmes III. If now, the modern historian,
amazed at the silence of the royal documents,
returns to the monuments in order to wrest from
them the truth he fails to derive from official
sources, he finds that all the inscriptions relating
to Hatshopsitu’s reign are hammered out;
can read them only by conjecture. In the bas-
reliefs the face of the queen is always completely
destroyed; her name effaced, mutilated, or, worse
still, replaced by that of another sovereign, some-
times that of her father Thotmes I, sometimes
that of her brothers, Thotmes II and Thotmes III.

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 11

From this, we conclude that Queen Hatshopsitu
was the object of a veritable persecution. Why
queer father and her brothers successively
leagued against her? The presence of her father,
whom she outlived, among her persecutors, indi-
cates that the family strife began before his death,
that she emerged from it triumphantly, but that
ge A Sa ee
cessors. The reign of Hatshopsitu presents itself
tous as an historical enigma, the key to which is
to be found in the ruins-of Karnak and Deir-el-
: Bahari.t Let us try to follow the changing
“fortunes of her life, the phases of the obscure
struggle in which she was now successful, now
defeated, and, in which finally, she was entirely

victorious.

The contest between the Thotmes and Queen
Hatshopsitu sprang from a question of
rights. According to the Egyptian belief, the
Pharaohs were the authentic sons of the Sun Ra,
in the direct line. To avoid the contamination of
the solar blood by alliance with a stranger, it
became an established custom for the sons and
daughters of the kings, brothers and sisters, to

«Kurt Sethe, Die Thronwirren unter den Nachfolgern Kgs.
Thutmosis I, 1896.

12 Kings and Gods of Egypt

marry among themselves; and the children of
such marriages alone were regarded as the true
sons of the gods, legitimate heirs of the throne.
Sometimes, however, it happened that, owing to
degeneration of the race or to some other reason,
the sons and daughters of the kings had to take a
consort, one in whose veins did not flow the solar
blood. Such a case occurred at the beginning of
the XVIIIth dynasty. King Thotmes I was
born from such an inferior union. His mother,
Senousenb, bore the title “mother of the king,”
not ‘‘spouse of the king’’; she seems, therefore,
to have been only a concubine.’ But_Thotmes
I, himself, married a legitimate“princess, rho
had the power to creer ne aaa
regal rights. It was through these rights that
Thotmes I occupied the throne on behalf of and
together with his wife, Queen Ahmasi. Thotmes
I and Queen Ahmasi had four children, two sons
and two daughters. The two sons, Amenmes and
Ouazmes,? died young; so the heir to the throne
was the elder daughter, our future Queen Hat-
shopsitu. But Thotmes had also two bastard

‘sons: one, whose Ore the title of “royal —

«See the rescript of the accession of Thotmes I, Aégyptische
Zeitschrift, xxix, p. 117.

?Mentioned in a funeral chapel at Gournah, pub. Grébaut,
Musée Egyptien, i, Pl. 6.

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 13

wife’’* (that is to say, a queen of an inferior rank,
never named ‘“‘chief spouse of the king’’) became,
later, Thotmes II; the other, born of a simple
concubine (‘“Gsit, wife of the king,’ yet not
“chief spouse of the king”’’) is known to history
as Thotmes III.’

That these illegitimate sons could seize the
throne and gain official recognition to the detri-
ment of the claims of the rightful heir, their sister,
Queen Hatshopsitu, can, to my mind, be explained
only by the existence of an opposition party at the
Egyptian court. This party would not, on any
terms, entrust to a woman, incapable of bearing
arms or of commanding an army in the field, the
destinies of Egypt, ata time when she had entered
upon a career of conquest and was striving for an
expansion of her dominions beyond their present
limits. The result was that the question of
women’s rights a d was fought out between
two parties, one struggling to support the legiti-

t She is the “ wife of the king, mother of the king,” Moutnefrit,
known by a statue that her son TtretmesIT consecrated to her.
Aegyptische Zeitschrift, 1887, p. 125.

2 According to this hypothesis, Thotmes II and Thotmes II
were half-brothers of Hatshopsitu (London, Statue of Anebni,
where Thotmes III is called brother of the queen, ap. Lepsius,
Auswahl, Pl. 11). Ed. Naville, on the contrary, following a text

at Karnak and the inscription of Anna, considers Thotmes II as _

father of Thotmes III. Cf. post, p. 29.

eka,

er

14 Kings and Gods of Egypt

mate claims of Hatshopsitu, the other trying to
bring about her downfall.

The struggle began on the death of the Queen
Ahmasi. Illegitimate by birth, king only while
he was the husband of a queen, Thotmes I, was
now an interloper on the throne. The legitimist
party, though they owed a debt of gratitude to the
great king who had achieved so much for the
glory of Egypt, compelled him to abdicate and
yield the power to Hatshopsitu. She married
and placed upon the throne as joint ruler her half-
probably the elder of the two illegitimate sons of
the deposed King. According to the royal tables,
which we know have been falsified, it is Thotmes
II who succeeded Thotmes I, and there are still a
few Egyptologists who accept the statement. But
if we refer to the monuments, it is quite clear that
Hatshopsitu_and Thotmes II were crowned on

‘ and reigned together prior to the
Thotmes who is described on the tables as Thotmes
II. Of the first two years of their joint reign, little
is known, save that the queen during this period

1 The “day of the enthronement” of Thotmes ITI and of the
queen is on the 4th Pakhons; positive proof, says Sethe (§17-18)
of the common accession of brother and sister. The accession

of Thotmes II, whom other scholars regard as the husband of
the queen, is on the contrary on the 8th of Paophi.

LIL? id
‘oorjlog peystuguy eyy “Mweyeg-]e-tteqd
“yoonod] 94D

winger
ao

This is not fair play and we are led to think
. that the truth is not fully revealed. It seems
; ind eed as if Thotmes III had occupied the throne
ven before the accession of the legitimate heir,
Hatshopsitu. Was this due to a conspiracy on
the part of the priests of Amon? Let us hear
what the king himself had to say upon the subject:

As a young man I was in the tem le Ss
raised 1 to the dignity of a phet. I played the

rere cietliee the young Honus of Khemmis;
I stood upright in the northern part of the hypostyle.
There was held a great festival of heaven and earth,

. during which the god received (on) his altar
in the temple the wonderful gifts of the people (offered
by the king). ... His Majesty placed before the
god incense on the fire and offered to him a great
oblation of oxen, calves, and mountain goats. The
god paced along two sides of the hypostyle; the heart
of those walking before him understood not what he

t Sethe, §31, ‘spouse of the god; chief spouse of the king.”
2 Dated from the year 2. (Lepsius, Denkmédler, iii, 55a.)
3 Priest of the royal worship.

16 Kings and Gods of Egypt

did, while he was seeking My Majesty everywhere.
When the god recognised me he halted. . . . I pro-
strated myself in his presence. He caused me to stand
in front of him, and lo! Lwas put in the-Place of the
_King. He was amazed to see me ____ and then were
revealed to the people the secrets that lay in the heart

of the god and were known to none. . - . He opened
for rizon of RA. I _soaretto>
heaven, like a divine f i is own shape

“in the skies: Ladored His Majesty Sue
~ glorious form of the god of the orizon on his mysteri-
“ous paths ia the~tenver:*— Ra Tamsell established
me (king); as consecrated with the diadems whic
f his head, and his ureeus was placed (on my
brow) .. . I received the dignities of avcking 2s.

and my great royal names were given Mess

In spite of this divine sanction, bestowed upon
him by the priests of Amon, Thotmes III could not
make valid his claim to the throne otherwise than
by marriage with the legitimate heir, Hatshopsitu.
But she was ambitious and found partisans to
support her rights. A plot of the priestly and
anti-feminist party was met by a counter-plot of
the legitimist_party. This came to pass between

x Amon-R& is a solar god who dwells in the sky. Hence the
terms the sky, the horizon of Ré are used as mystical designators of
the sanctuary where dwells the statue of Amon-R& before which
the royal candidate is brought; he is then supposed to be carried
up to heaven like a falcon (Horus) soaring to the sun.

2 From an inscription carved on the outer side of the south wall
of the sanctuary at Karnak—lately published with commentary
by Breasted, A New Chapter in the Life of Thutmose III, 1900,

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 17

the years 2 and 5 of the reign about the time when
Hatshopsitu began to build the temple of Deir-el-
Bahari. From this date onward, Hatshopsitu,
who up to the present has been known only as
“chief wife of the king,’”’ assumes all the designa-
tions that are the prerogative of the king. She
is called ‘‘female Horus,”’ ®. “female RA” — .

le , the double cartouche and the usual fourfold
names, as can be seen in the two series of bas-
reliefs relating to the birth and enthronement, that
she caused to be engraved in her temple of Deir-el-
Bahari.

These bas-reliefs were intended to remind her
people that of the royal pair, it is she alone who,
as the direct offspring of Amon-R4, has the actual
right to sit upon the throne. The theory of the
solar descent can be traced back to a very remote
past. The first evidence we have of its practical
application dates from the years of the Vth
dynasty, when the kings assumed the title of
“sons of the Sun” ee, a title, which from that

time was-constantly borne by them. But
to our knowledge, Hatshopsitu is the first sover-
eign who had the circumstances of the royal birth
set forth pictorially, and with elaborate detail,

on the walls of a temple. Testimony to her
Se pee ee

18 Kings and Gods of Egypt

divine origin would help her to enforce her rights.
Therefore, to convince the people of her legitimacy,
she caused to be engraved upon the walls of the
middle terrace of the temple a picture showing
the carnal union of the

The god and the queen
are represented sitting face
to face, their legs crossed,
ona state bed ornamented
with the head and feet of
a lion. The queen receives
from her husband the sym-
bols of life and strength

(¢ iy the two goddesses,
Neit and Selkit, protectors

Fic. 2.—Amon-RA and the i ‘
Queen. of conjugal unions, support

the feet of the royal pair, and guard their persons
from all evil. The lyric text, inscribed around the
picture, leaves no doubt regarding the material
nature of the union.

These were the words of Amon-R&, king of the gods,
lord of Karnak, he who rules at Thebes, when he took
upon himself the form of that male, the king of the
South and of the North, Thotmes I, giver of life. He.
found the queen sleeping amidst the splendours of her

.

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 19

palace. The perfume of the god awoke her, and,
when His Majesty marched straight towards her,
knew her, laid his heart against hers, and made him- |
self known unto her in his godly aspect, she marvelled
greatly! And when he had revealed himself, she was f
enraptured by the knowledge of his beauties; her love |;
for the god coursed through her being and the odour |
of the god and of his breath were fragrant with all
the fragrance of Punt.

And these were the words of the spouse of the
king, the mother of the king, Ahmasi, in the presence
of t ; his august god, Amon, lord_of
Karnak, master of Thebes: ‘‘Twice great are thy
souls! It is a noble thing to view thy face when thou
knowest My Majesty in the fulness of thy grace!
Thy dew flows through all my members!’’ Then,
when the majesty of the god had accomplished all
his desire with her, Amon, the god of the two lands,
thus spoke unto her: ‘She who unites herself with
Amon, the first of the beloved, jit Fo ng =
behold! such shall be the name of on
the daughter who shall open thy womb, since those
are the words that have fallen from thy lips. She
my so €rs, my will is hers, my crown is hers,
verily! that she may govern the two lands and guide
all the living doubles.*

pees,

t Deir-el-Bahari, ii, Pl. XLVII, text completed by that of
Luxor (Recueil de travaux, ix, p. 84). The Egyptians tried to
remember the words that the mother uttered at the moment of
conception (they are the words underlined in the text) and made
from them a name of good omen for the child. Cf. A. Moret,
Du caractére religieux de la royauté pharaonique, p. 50 et seq.
(Annales du Musée Guimet, Bibliotheque d'études, t. xv).

sy, +% (ory

pr

20 Kings and Gods of Egypt

On other bas-reliefs of Deir-el-Bahari are re-
presented scenes which portray the preparations,
the accouchement, and the delive ueen.
Khno Bea ter, who gives their
fSrms to gods and men, declares to Amon that he
will so fashion the royal child that her beauty shall
surpass the beauty of the gods, so that she may
be the better fitted to fulfil her mission as ruler of
the two lands. The following scene shows us
Ahmasi in labour (Fig. 3). The Queen is seated
in an arm-chair which is placed on a platform
shaped like a bed; Isis and Nephthys hold her
by the arms, according to the eastern custom;
the new-born child is presented to protecting god-

desses, who breathe into her and her_double the-

the child to Amon, her real father, who “clasps,
caresses, and rocks her whom he loves above all
things.’’ and addresses to her these words of

welcome: ‘Come,-comein_peace, daughter of my

loins,-whom_1 love, royal image, thouwho- wilt-

make real thy-risings-on-the throne of the Hor us-of

the living, forever!’’? Next, Hatshopsitu is shown

(after Gayet, Pl. 63 and 65), those a eir-el-Bahari being
too mutilated for reproduction.
t Deir-el-Bahart, 1, Pl. XLVIII.

@[bid., ii, Pl. LI-LIII.

“breath of lite. Then is shown the presentation of

‘yorreyg oy} Jo yIg—

€ Ol

rae

21

22 Kings and Gods of Egypt

acknowledged and worshipped by the other gods,
while the divine promises made to her are duly
inscribed upon the celestial books."

Such bas-reliefs of the theogony and birth_of
-Hatshopsitu were certainly injurious to the bas-
“tard Pharaoh, Thotmes III, who could not, like
his queen, boast of a divine origin. Nor could he
find pleasure in other pictures which formed a
sequence to these and showed how Hatshopsitu,
called to the throne by her divine father, Amon-Ra4,
was crowned indeed by her human father Thotmes
I, and became Queen of Egypt through the will
of the gods and of men.

Asareply to the inscription telling how Thotmes
ITI received the crown from the hands of Ra, when
the machinations of the priesthood placed him on
the throne, Hatshopsitu desired to be depicted
wearing the pschent, after a visit to the gods of
Heliopolis. There, Atoum placed the diadem
upon her head, as a suggestion to the Egyptians
and to the gods of Thebes to establish her queen of
Egypt. What her age may have been at this time
we do not know. The texts tell us only that
‘Her Majesty was growing above all things .
she was beautiful to look upon above all things

«A. Moret, Du caractére religieux de la royauté pharaonique,
PP- 53-59-

PALS ic

“SoLENOULG UBIULIO}qng oy} OF souvIyUg “Weyeg-]e-tted

“yaon0d 9yrO

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 23

she was like unto a god; her form was that
of a god; she did everything like a god; her
splendour was that of a god; Her Majesty was a
maiden, fair and in her bloom... .’”"

Then we hear that one day, in that spring-time
of her youth, Thotmes I, seated on a high throne
in the royal hall, called together his nobles, his dig-
nitaries, his friends, the court slaves, and the state
officials, that they might witness the following
scene. The King, seated, placed his daughter in
front of him, embraced her, and proceeded to make
the magic passes of the setep sa? while the whole
assembly, prostrate on the ground, aided in the
sending forth of the protective magic fluid.
Thotmes I then appealed to those present, to
acknowledge their new ruler:

This, my living daughter, Khnoumit-Amon Hat-
shopsitu, I place in my seat; I set her on my throne.
Behold! she sits upon my throne; she makes her words
heard in all parts of the palace; verily, she guides you.
Hearken to her words and submit yourselves to her
commands. He who adores her, behold! he shall live.
He who speaks evil against Her Majesty, behold! he

t Deir-el-Bahari, iii, Pl. LVII

2In order to send forth the setep sa, which ensures to an in-
dividual i otection, the o r is represented stand-
ing behind him with outstretched hand raised along his neck
or his back. From its analogy to hypnotic passes, we translate
setep sa by the expression “send forth the fluid of life.”

| - tte

Crs

24, Kings and Gods of Egypt

shall die. Let all those who hearken to her and with
their whole hearts accept the name of Her Majesty
come, even now, to proclaim her Queen beside me.
Verily! this daughter of the gods is divine, and the
gods fight for her and shed their fluid [of life] upon
her neck every day, as was ordained by her father,
the lord of the gods.

This address of the King was received with

‘

great favour by the assembly, who ‘‘proclaimed”’

the royal name of the new Pharaoh.

The royal nobles, the dignitaries, the chief officials
listened to the announcement that she possessed the
dignity of daughter of the king, that she was queen of

the South and of the North, Matt ka rt E 3
that she would live forever. They grov- ( }
elled at her feet; they prostrated themselves at her

royal command to adore all the gods adored by her
father, King Thotmes I.

Then the nekheb or protocol of her new royal names
was drawn up, and Amon-RA so inspired the
priests whose duty it was to bestow these names
upon her ‘‘that they chose even those that he had
given her already” at the moment of his union
with Queen Ahmasi.

After this investiture by men, Hatshopsitu had
still to ‘receive her crowns from+heards of the _
The first ceremony represented is a purification.

(CS) G6

CER ce _ EN
UE: ee
ISM CSSA

Tele) SSN Me
> |

Ds

S

= dfn A
lseehiceD

ar)

pe

2
a

XS
——

a» Ke]
sei (grosd:
Orn > La Wf Z
U
<1 |
Se \/_| Bee

4
eS
met
Via

Fic. 4.—The Coronation of the Pharaoh.

t
‘

IsfefeNz Hie owe etree
Sees) VS |

nnn ah ——— —eaennenel

25

(Mariette, Abydos, i, pl. 31 a.)

26 Kings and Gods of Egypt

After this, Hatshopsitu enters the sanctuary, pre-
ceded by the old historical ensigns of the Egyptian
nomes. She goes first to the naos of the South,
where the gods Horus and Seth* place on her head
the white crown of the South qd . She then pro-
ceeds to the naos of the North, where she receives
the red crown of the North Se This ceremony
was called the rising of the king of the South and
the rising of the king of the North. Next, the
Queen wearing the pschent q: or double crown,
+5 seen seated on a throne between two divinities
of the South and the North. Beneath the royal
seat were placed flowers of the lotus, the plant of
the South, and branches of papyrus, the plant of
the North. These are tied together by cords
which are crossed around a central pillar; the gods
__ Horus and Seth draw the cords tight with their
hands (Fig. 4), and hold them firm with their
. feet so that-totus and papyrus may be drawn
together. This rite was called sam taour. It
symbolised the ‘‘union of the two lands of the
North and South’’ under the feet of the Queen.
Finally, Hatshopsita, her crown upon her head,
a great mantle upon her shoulders, holding in her

« Represented by two priests wearing, one the head of a hawk
(Horus), the other, the head of a Typhonian animal (Seth) or the
head of an ibis (Thot). -

1
or One

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 27

hands the scourge and staff of Osiris, walks in

‘

procession “‘round the wall” of the sanctuary, in
order to take possession of it and to assure the
protection ‘‘of the domain of Horus and the do-
main of Seth.’’ This done, the new queen is led
in great pomp to Amon, her celestial father, who
embraces her, and she enters definitively upon the
mission, more divine than human, that devolves
upon the Pharoah.*

Throughout this detailed account of the en-
thronement of Hatshopsitu by her human father,
Thotmes I, and by the Theban gods, no mention
is ever made of her husband, Thotmes III; no
reference, even, to his existence. This leads to the
supposition that the Queen had the pictures en-
graved after a successful attempt of her party to
place her on the throne. This revolution thrust
Thotmes III to one side, without depriving him of
the title of king, but made the Queen the actual
ruler. This story-of her coronation by her father,
Thotmes I, which we have just_e ined, is but
an historical fiction, designed for the edification

t Deir-el-Bahari, iii, Pl. LX, et seg. All these ceremonies, as
old as the Egyptian monarchy, are represented in pictures or
mentioned in proto-historic records; they preserve a remembrance
of the mythical kingship of Horus and Seth, who, according to
tradition, reigned before the human kings. Detailed description
and signification will be found in A. Moret, Du caractére religieux
de la royauté pharaomque, pp. 79-113.

Re 28 Kings and Gods of Egypt

a4 of her subjects. We have seen that after the
deposition of Thotmes I, it was in reality Thotmes
“rights fom his wile, Hatshopata ‘
manner as his father held his from his wife, Queen
Ahmasi. But Thotmes ITI had neglected to have
his queen, “represented beside him on the monu-
~ments.—N ow that a turn of fortune places her
“on the throne, Hatshopsitu treats him in like
manner, and she appears alone in all representa-
tions of regal functions.

How strange and difficult, however, must have
been her position is evidenced by the very texts
and pictures at Deir-el-Bahari. The Egyptians
seem to have offered strenuous opposition to the
idea of a female Pharaoh. But though at Deir-
el-Bahari, the texts speak of her in feminine terms,
the pronouns referring to her being always “she”
and ‘‘her,’”’ and the royal or divine titles assumed
by her are transcribed in the feminine form,
ee a , Is i Ee _.., etc., it is obvious that she was

at great pains to conceal her sex. In the pictires-of_
_tionably a male._ | n the pictures of the coronation
she is represented as wearing the traditional state

dress of the kings, a short loin-cloth, a false beard,
and a plaited tail hanging behind from her loins;

.

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 29

while her uncovered breast is distinctly mascu-
line. She even tried to change the very name
she had received at her birth and to mascu-
linise it by omitting the feminine ending. She
modified Hatshopsitu, ‘‘the first of the be-
loved women,’ into Hatshopsiu, “the first of
the nobles’ (Plate I). Do not these rather
clumsy stratagems imply a fear lest the court
and the people should distrust her, because
she was a woman: and, therefore, unable to
fulfil all the duties which a man-ruler regards
as inseparable from the exercise of the kingly
office?

This brilliant period in the life of Hatshopsitu
lasted only about eighteen months. Towards the
end of the year 6, monuments, such as those of
Deir-el-Bahari, appear to us to undergo a change.
The texts concerning the birth and enthronement
are pitilessly hammered out, the figures of the
Queen are completely destroyed. In those cases
where some outline remains, a singular inter-
ference may be remarked: the names of Hatshop-
situ and of Thotmes III are replaced by those of
Thotmes I, and of his second son Thotmes II;

while for Bi erate nhoris inition

presence of a god, there is substituted the design

30 Kings and Gods of Egypt

of an altar‘ in order to retain some signification
for the picture. For example, on a certain obelisk,
the Queen was represented as seated before the god
Amon, bowing her neck before him in order to
receive his blessing. The restorers have trans-
formed the picture thus: The god stretches out
his hand to take the offerings placed on two little
altars which occupy the place of the original
figure of the Queen, still visible, in spite of the
hammering out of its contours. What conclusion
is to be drawn from this evidence? The following,
it would appear. The Queen and her husband
Thotmes III were dispossessed and replaced by
the very men whose names are superimposed
on the former and who made these alterations,?
Thotmes I and Thotmes II. That would explain
why in the chapels of Anubis? and Hathor which
are of later date than the bas-reliefs of the birth
and enthronement, the royal donors are no longer
Hatshopsitu and Thotmes ITI, but Thotmes I and
Thotmes II, who up to this time have never
appeared in this réle in the parts of the temple
built at an earlier date.

t Sethe, loc cit., § 46.

2Sethe, §22-24. The conjecture that Hatshopsitu was perse-
cuted by Thotmes II had already been admitted by E. de Rougé.

3 With the wooden shrine of which we have preserved the panels
(Deir-el-Bahart ii, 27-29).

Deir-el-Bahari. Entrance to Anubis Chapel.
Plate: V.

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 31

Was this restoration of masculine government
brought about by the exigencies of military
expeditions which it seemed unfitting should be led
by a queen? Be that as it may, Thotmes I and
Thotmes II are no sooner joint kings on the throne
than they begin anew campaigns in Nubia and
expeditions to the shores of the Euphrates. *
The booty amassed during these wars permits
them to build an altar and new chapels at Deir-el-
Bahari. In the midst of all_these eventsThotmes

served at Turin, in which Thotmes I] is represented
tion recently discovered at Karnak,* we learn
further that after the death of his father, Thotmes
II, feeling his position insecure, took as his co-
regent, not Hatshopsitu, but her discarded hus-
band, ThotmesIII. Their joint government lasted

to recover her kingdom, which she held till her
death. This is how a contemporary, Anna, de-
scribes the situation on the death of Thotmes Adi.

: According to the biographies of Anna and Ahmes, and a text
at Assouan. Cf. Breasted, Ancient Records, ti, pp. 47-52:

2 Lepsius, Auswahl, Pitan

3 Breasted, Ancient Records, ii, p. 235-

2 Kings and Gods of Egypt

The king ascended to the Heavens and joined the
com e gods; his son [the expression ns his
successor, Thotmes III'] took his place as king of the
Two Lands; he reigned on the throne of him who
begat him. His sister, the divine woman Hatshopsitu,
adjusted the affairs of the two kingdoms according
to her own mind. Egypt, bowing the head before
her cultivated the excellent seed divine, sprung from
the god. She was the cable which drew the North,
the stake to which was moored the South; she was the
perfect tiller-rope of the North, the mistress who is-
sues commands, whose wise plans bring peace upon
the Two Lands when she opens her mouth.”

This description of the later power of the Queen.
is entirely confirmed by the pictures in the temple
of Deir-el-Bahari, the construction of which was
resumed by her in the year 9. The situation is

; _ ousted from the throne by the coalitio =a

_I and Thotmes II. All the honours are for the
Queen; as for Thotmes ITI, he very rarely appears
in the | decoration of the temple, and, then, always
behind the Queen, or in the Tole of a subordinate.

~~ How then can it be explained why Thotmes
recalled Hatshopsitu? It must have been that

« The reading of Sethe, §7 and Breasted, Ancient Records, ii, p.
142.
2 Biography of Anna; see also the inscription at Karnak
(Breasted, Ancient Records, ii, pp. 142 and 235).

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 33

he was compelled to do so by the legitimist party.
And now, this party, whose presence, thus far,
has been a matter of conjecture, enters upon the
scene. The leaders of it are known to us and we
see them portrayed upon the walls of Deir-el-
Bahari. They are as follows:

Senmout, the architect of the temple, of whom
we possess two statues which were granted him by
the Queen. He superintended all the construc-
tion at Deir-el-Bahari, Karnak, Luxor, etc. The
Queen a ane TE of her
daughter Neferoura, whom he holds in his lap
in the statue which is preserved at Berlin. He
was, at a later date, the trustee of the princess’s
fortune and one of the stewards of the immense
domain of Amon! (Plate VI, 1).

Nehsi was the guardian of the royal seal, chief
treasurer, and an intimate friend. He shared with
Senmout the command of the expedition into the
land of Punt.’

Thoutii administered the royal finances, as the
“head of the house of the gold and of the silver.’’3

Hépousenb, high-priest of Amon, chief of the
prophets of the South and of the North, and, at

t Cf. Breasted, Ancient Records, ii, p. 363-
2 [bid., ii, p. 290.
3 Ibid., ii, p. 369-

3

9
‘

34 Kings and Gods of Egypt

the same time, prime minister, held in his hands
all civil and priestly power.*

Such were the leaders of the camarilla who
brought about Hatshopsitu’s triumph. They all
took a leading part in the memorable events which
followed the restoration in the year 9. The temple
of Deir-el-Bahari has preserved for us a descrip-
tion of one of these enterprises which appears to
have impressed contemporaries, namely a maritime
expedition to the land of Punt.

Punt was an almost unknown region which
stretched along the two shores of the Red Sea.’
It may perhaps be placed in about the locality of
Souakim and Massaouah. The’ Egyptians said
that perfumes, incense, myrrh, precious woods,
gold, and all the riches of the earth could be found
in abundance in this earthly paradise, the country
of the gods Horus.and Hathor, the ‘‘land divine.”
Punt was to them a half-real, half-fabulous region

of which they thought as the va t
‘of the race, both gods and men. During the

Ancient Empire and a ime or the first Theban

kings,* several expeditions had gone thither to
bring back gold, spices, and perfumes. It was to

t Breasted, Ancient Records, ii, p. 388.
2 Mariette, Deir-el-Bahari, Pl. 5.
3 Breasted, Ancient Records, ii, p. 102.

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 35

pay a debt of gratitude to the gods Amon and
Hathor, whose priests had finally supported her
rights, that as soon as Hatshopsitu was established
once more on the throne, she sent her most faithful
agents, Senmout, Nehsi, and Thouti on an em-
bassy to Punt (Fig. 5)."

ea sy ems es
: On Nin SBI

Fic. 5.—A Village in the Land of Punt.

_In ae hg ee
matter. One day, ‘‘the prayers of the sovereign
~Fose-to-the throne of the lord of Karnak and a
command was heard in the sanctuary, an oracle
from the god himself, that the ways to Punt should
be explored, and the roads searched out which

lead to the land of the Incense.”” “TI have given

: Davis and Naville, The Tomb of Hatshopsitu, p. 32.

36 Kings and Gods of Egypt

thee Punt,’”’ says the god elsewhere, ‘‘none knew
the way to the country of the gods, none had gone
‘up to the terraces of the Incense, none among the
fe eiascer ee of them from the
lips of those who lived in olden times.”

The fleet, composed of five ships, was heartily

h

UT

TORU

Fic. 6.—Parihu, Lord of the Land of Punt,
and his Wife, Ati.

welcomed by Parihu, lord of the land of Punt,
and his wife Ati! (Fig. 6). The Egyptians offered
gifts of ‘bread, beer, wine, meat, vegetables,—
all the things of Egypt.”’ In exchange, Senmout
loaded his boats with thirty-one incense trees,
1 Notice that Parihu carries a boomerang in his hand, wears a
necklace around his neck, has a dagger thrust into his belt, and his
right leg is covered with metal rings (from their yellow colour,

possibly of gold). His wife, and his daughter (portrayed else-
where) are of the large and adipose type of beauty, characteristic

of the Hottentot Venus.

Ere pa ye?

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 37

and “heaps of aromatic gums, ebony, ivories,
gold, precious woods, incense, antimony powder,
monkeys, greyhounds, besides skins of the leo-
pards of the South, and people of the land and
their children.’’ When the expedition returned to
Thebes, the incense trees were transplanted in the
court of the temple, which became ‘‘the garden of
Amon.’’ All the treasures from the land of Punt

were presented to the gods.

The Queen gave a silver-gilt bushel-measure to
measure the heaps of gum, the first time they enjoyed
the happiness of measuring the perfumes for Amon
and of presenting to him the wonderful gifts that
Punt produces. Thot recorded the amounts in writ-
ing. ... Her Majesty herself prepared with her own
hands an essence to perfume her limbs. She exhaled
the odour of the divine dew, her fragrance reached as
far as Punt, her skin was like kneaded gold, and her
face shone like stars in a festal hall, before the whole

earth.*

The fétes which followed the expedition into
Punt mark, as it were, the apotheosis of the Queen
and constituted the glory of the temple of Deir-el-
Bahari. During the remaining years of her life
(we count them as far as the year 20),? the Queen

: Translation of Maspero. Cf. Histoire, ii, p. 245 et seq. and

Etudes de mythologie et archéologie, iv, p. 93 et seq.
2 According to an expedition to Sinai, dated from the year

20 of the joint reign (Petrie, Sinai, p. 19).

38 Kings and Gods of Egypt

continued the decoration of the temple, but the
building was never completed. She allowed the
bas-reliefs of the first years of her reign to remain
mutilated as they had been by Thotmes I and II.
She did not restore them nor did she persecute the
memory of either her father or her brother by
hammering out their names and portraits. She
seems to have spent her last years in peace and
Glory. Her taithiut-servant, Hapousenb, under-
“took to hew her a tomb in the “valley of the kings,”
which is situated beyond the cliff that overhangs
the temple. This hypogeum, which is dug out
slantwise, goes very far down and the chamber is
goo feet away from the entrance. It was cleared
out by Mr. Davis in 1904 who found in it two
beautiful empty sarcophagi and the canopic box
of Thotmes I and of the Queen his daughter.*
The mummy of the King had some time before
been found in the ‘‘well of Deir-el-Bahari.’’ Is
Hatshopsitu’s, perhaps, one of the two female

mummies cing 4 iptions, that have not yet
been identified?

So far, sere has been no reply

BSS els! the mortal

r
Is it possible 7 the body was sacrificed to the
spite and vengeance of her enemies? Thotmes ITI,
1 Davis and Naville, The Tomb of Hatshopsitu.

Queen Hatshopsitu and Her Temple 39

from the year 9, had occupied a subordinate,
humiliating position; in the bas-reliefs of the ex-
pedition to Punt, which exalt so high the glory of
his sister-queen, he is mentioned and represented
only once, offering the incense he did not conquer
to the gods of the Queen. But after the Queen's

death, he and-his party take their’ revenge. The
temple of Deir-el-Bahari suffers again from the
rage of the iconoclasts; all the inscriptions and

cbas-reliefs in which the Queen appears are detacte

by the hammer, i i

land of Punt are spared—those, at least, in which

she is supposed to have had no part. Even the

tombs of those who had so faithfully served the

Queen—Senmout, Nehsi, Thoutii, HAapousenb—

were completely sacked. Then, Tahotmes—l.
free at last to exercise his own personal energy, to

act upon his own initiative set_out, in the year

22, upon the famous expeditions into Syria, which
made him the greatest Egyptian conqueror.

Such are the tragic events of the story which we
gan Teconstitutefrom the defaced walls of Deitel
Bahari. It is not easy to extricate the truth in

“history from official falsehood, involuntary errors,
and personal interpretations. The temple of
Deir-el-Bahari is like a palimpsest in which we
laboriously decipher the old script beneath the

40 Kings and Gods of Egypt

newer writing above it. The patient efforts of
many scholars have been required to rescue from
oblivion that Queen, cast out from the royal lists.*
History presents similar enigmatic figures; among
them, in France, Louis XVII, who, unlike Hat-
shopsitu, is counted in the chronological tables,
though he never reigned.

Can it be said that Hatshopsitu was a great
queen? We may suppose so. She appears to
have been endowed with energy and patience,
with a shrewd and subtle mind, and one recog-
nises in her the far-away ancestress of that line of
clever rulers, of whom Catherine of Russia, Eliza-
beth of England, and Maria Theresa of Austria
are notable instances, who were able, in spite of
opposition, to maintain themselves on the throne
using pardon more than chastisement. She seems
to have had all the qualities of a Pharaoh, and prob-
ably the only reproach_that was brought_against _
__her is that she was a woman. If that caused
the erasure of her name from the royal records,
we will repair the prejudice of the Egyptians, by
admiring at Deir-el-Bahari all that is left to us of
the first woman who reigned in her own right.

«Ed. Naville does not admit the events as stated by Sethe in

the royal career of Hatshopsitu. Cf. Davis and Naville, The
Tomb of Hatshopsitu.

CHAPTER II
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION OF AMENOPHIsS IV

IN spite of the fact that many of his monuments
have been preserved for us, Amenophis IV,* who
reigned about 1370 B.c., is of all the Pharaohs
the most curious and at the same time the most
enigmatic figure. In this land of Egypt, where
tradition is all-powerful, amongst a people, ‘‘the
most religious of all men,’’? who had remained
faithful to their gods for thousands of years,
Amenophis IV devised and carried out a religious
‘revolution, the disestablishment and disendow-

ment of the great national god, Amon-Ra. He
er a sich,
he imposed upon the-court; the priests, the Egyp-
tian people, and foreign subjects.

To sever the relations between the state and the
sacerdotal class, who administer the official reli-
gion, has proved an arduous task in any country

t Amenophis is the Greek transcription of the Egyptian name
Amonhetep or Amenhotep. —____—_——
2 Expression used by Herodotus.

41

42 Kings and Gods of Egypt

and in any age; but what particular difficulties
did such a revolution mean in Egypt? Amenophis
IV, like all the Pharaohs, his ancestors—we have
already had an instance in Hatshopsitu—was
regarded as the son and heir of the gods, and in
particular as the successor of Amon-R&4, the patron
god of Thebes, which had become the capital of
Egypt under the New Empire. Upon the temple
walls were sculptured the scenes which testified to

the ese ah acerca At Luxor,
| {Sr example, was represented the carnal union

of Amon with the Queen Moutemoua, mother of

ene eet

Amenophis III, the father of our revolutionary
king. Another picture showed the Queen being
delivered, with the help of the goddesses, and
bringing forth a child. Amon, taking the little
King in his arms, acknowledged him as his son and
named him his heir.2 Probably the birth of
—Amenophis IV hatbeen illustrated in the same
way, the same things being said and done, as a
testimony to the divine origin of the Pharaoh, and
to his right to govern men.
Moreover at this period, at the end of the XVITIth
dynasty, Amon had earned new rights to the grati-

t See ante, p. 19.

2A. Moret, Du caractére religieux de la royauté pharaonique, p.
50 et seq.

‘TA 932Id
“(She -d ‘77 ‘4stzT ‘orodse
( II W)

‘Treyeg-]o-110q
jo yooyyory oy} ‘qnoutueg “T (chi “31g Ydksq fo K40js1F7 ‘poyseoig)

*(ursog)) TID Bun, JoosioL, “II

‘uoyeunoyy jo Jayysneq VY “TIT

Revolution of Amenophis IV 43

tude of the kings. It was scarcely two hundred
years since the Shepherd Kings, the Hyksos, had
come over from Asia and settled in the Delta and
in Middle Egypt, subjugating the cities, pillaging
the country, and ransacking the temples of the
native gods, to enrich with these spoils their own
divinities, Baal, the Asiatic, and Soutekhou, the
great warrior. Yet owing to the assistance of their
patron-god, Amon, the petty Theban kings of the
XVIIth dynasty had been able to start upon a war
of independence, driving the Shepherd Kings little
by little out of Egypt until by the victories of
Ahmes I, they were finally expelled. If later,
Thotmes I and Thotmes III could conquer the
Syrian Ports, traverse the Libyan desert, cross the
Orontes, and reach the banks of the Euphrates; if
their successors, the Amenophises, established
their protectorate over Syria and Palestine in the
North, and Nubia in the South, was it not because
Amon had continued to fight with Pharaoh and
guide the archers and the chariots of Egypt during
the battles? The official account of these cam-
paigns, engraved upon the walls of Karnak and
Luxor, testify, at least, that these victories were
the achievements of Amon, that the conquered
lands belonged to. Amon, and that the tribute
raised in Syria and in Nubia went to swell the

44 Kings and Gods of Egypt

treasures of Amon. The T heban god, enriched
and strengthened by so many victories, had
become the national god, the god of revenge
upon the Asiatics.

Father of the Pharaohs, conqueror of the
stranger, Amon_was, moreover, the god who,
through his intermediaries, the priests, upheld the
power and authority of the King in the internal
“government of Egypt. After the glorious reign of
"Thotmes I, the royal house had been weakened by
dynastic quarrels. The Pharaohs had been driven
from the throne, supplanted by a woman, the
Queen Hatshopsitu; they had been recalled, then
banished again; and finally they had been trium-
phant. The high-priests of Amon had concocted
these intrigues, by turn giving and withdrawing
their support. They had thus become, in very
truth, the governors of the palace, exercising civil
authority as well as religious functions. At the
time of Hatshopsitu,’ prince Hapousenb, under
Amenophis III, Phtahmes, held the cumulative
offices of ‘‘chief prophet of Amon, ruler of all the
prophets of the South and of the North, governor
of the city of Thebes, vizier of the whole of

Egypt.”? So much spiritual and temporal power,

‘ Breasted, Ancient Records, II, p. 160. See ante, p. 31.
*Statuette of Phtahmes, published by Legrain, ap. Recueil,

Revolution of Amenophis IV 45

concentrated in one hand, was dangerous in a high
degree to Pharaoh! Such ambiguous situations
usually end in the servant’s taking precedence of
his master, ousting him little by little from the
government, in order that some fine day, he may
himself mount the throne. That is what came to
pass some centuries later, at the end of the XXth
dynasty, when the priests of Amon became the
Pharaohs. This sacerdotal revolution was already
in the air at the end of the XVIIIth dynasty; but
Amenophis IV was the man who turned aside the
natural course of events, break € r_of
the priests of Amon lest they should dethrone the
kings. With a far-sighted view of the danger he
‘attempted to overthrow the priesthood of Amon,
by doing away, at one and the same time, with the
priests and the god.

Was the man who dared thus to measure himself
against the mighty Amon one of those exceptional
individuals whose giant stature and physical force
explain their combative spirit and their power of
ruling men? In nowise. Amenophis IV was a
man of middle height, of slight build, with round
and feminine outlines. ‘The sculptors of the time

pees. ee ee
xxix, p. 83; ¢f. the stela of Lyon, published by Devéria, Zwores,
in the Bibliotheque Egyptologique, t. iv, p. 84.

46 Kings and Gods of Egypt

have left us faithful ase aga ee
body, whose prominefit breasts, large hips, and
curving thighs present an ambiguous and sickly
‘appearance. The head is very striking with the
‘soft oval of the face, the slightly oblique eyelids,
the delicate outline of a long and slender nose, the
projection of the prominent lower lip, the round and
receding skull drooping forward as if the neck were
not strong enough to support it (Plate VII, 1).
The whole gives the impression of a refined but
enervated individual; physically it is a Pharaoh
jin de race. It has been wondered whether this
somewhat degenerate body could be the offspring
of two Egyptians of good stock. The mother of
the King, Tii, the favourite wife of Amenophis III,
was of humble birth; her father, Iouada, and her
mother, Touda, bore names which have sounded
rather Semitic’ to some scholars, so they thought
that Amenophis IV, by his mother Tii, had Semitic
blood in his veins, and, as the spirit of his religious
reform is strongly monotheistic, this was traced
to the direct influence of the maternal blood on
the ideas and singular character of the son.?

* Numerous scarabs that Amenophis had had engraved on the
occasion of his marriage with Tii bear the names of his father and
mother (cf. Maspero, Histoire, ii, p. 315). Their names are of
true Egyptian origin, as has been proved by Maspero, ap. Recueil
de travaux, iii, p. 128.

*It has been questioned whether Tii was the mother of Ameno-

Revolution of Amenophis IV 47

The soil of Egypt has enabled us to solve this
interesting problem. During the month of Febru-
ary, 1905, Mr. Theodore Davis had the good
fortune to excavate at Thebes the tomb intact of
the father and mother of the Queen Ti. “All
the objects which came out of the hypogeum are
of the finest Egyptian style, and there is nowhere
any trace of foreign influence . . . the mummies
themselves afford no positive evidence.”’* Touda
is of the purest Egyptian type; Iouda has a high-
bridged nose, not characteristically Semitic in its
curve.?. It appears from the titles that he bore,
that the grandfather of Amenophis IV was a native
of Akhmim, a town in the middle of Egypt.

Let us admit that this Reformer-Pharaoh
sprang from true Egyptian blood. Moreover, if
his physique was somewhat degenerate, his intelli-
gence was not at all so. The religious hymns he
composed show him to have been possessed of a
mystical mind, with a deep, lively sensibility which

ae

phis IV (Wiedemann, ap. Proceedings, S. B. A., XVii, p. 156);
but letters from the correspondence of El-Amarna designate
Amenophis IV as son of Tii (Petrie, History of Egypt, ii, p. 209).
Concerning this correspondence, see A. Moret, In the Time of the
Pharaohs, p. 55 et seq.

«Legrain, Thebes et le schisme de Khouniatonou, p. 13 (ap.
Bessarione, xi, 1906).

2Cf. Catalogue du Musée du Caire, Tomb of Yuaa and Thuia,
1908, Pl. LVII-LX and frontispiece.

48 Kings and Gods of Egypt

embraced the whole of nature. We know from
the pictures of the times, that he was devoted to
family life; his mother Tuii, his wife, and even his
four daughters appear by his side, not only in the
intimacy of his private apartments, but in all
public functions. To sum up, Amenophis IV
unites in a hitherto unknown combination the
majesty of the Pharaoh and the virtues of a private

man. He was ki simple in manner; he is

a thinker, of subtle mind, persevering and system-

———

atic; a dreamer an ! i is-tdeas

’
—

ER,
to their logical conclusion, and one who did not
shrink from bold measures.
io ea ae

From the beginning of his reign, Amenophis IV

found himself confronted by the god, Amon of
Thebes, whose priesthood had become overbold
by reason of their enormous wealth, and who were
bent upon taming the Pharaohs to their will.

A reaction was necessary and must indeed have
taken place, for in the year 6 of the new reign, a
political revolution, radical in its character, had
been effected." Thebes was no longer the capital
of Egypt. The ‘City of Amon” had become the
wity of Aton = the high-priest of Amon and the
Atnonian priesthood had been swept away, and

t Lepsius, Denkméiler, iii, 110, b.

Revolution of Amenophis IV 49

the worship of Amon was forbidden through-
out Egyptian territory. Even the name of Amon
might not be uttered, it might not be written on
stone or on papyrus, and as, in spite of the present,
the past still recalled it, engraved on thousands of
monuments, the Réformer-King undertook a me-
thodical déstruction, not of the monuments, but of
the name of the god Amon. Onevery wall, on the
side of columns, on the summit of obelisks, on the
base of tombs, everywhere,—the iconoclasts, com-
missioned by the King, spied out the cursed hiero-
glyphics, so that the names of Amon and of the
goddess Mout might be ruthlessly hammered out.

er was to slay his soul,’ to
annihilate his double, to destroy his title-deeds, to
annul his victories and his conquests. To suppress
Amon was tantamount to rewriting a human his-
tory of Egypt, in which the great achievements
of the Pharaohs would rightly redound to their
honour, and not to that of the arrogant god who
called himself their father, but boasted also of
being their guide and inspirer. Finally in order
to typify his complete severance from a hated
past, the King changed his name of Amenophis

« Cf. Lefébure, La vertu et la vie du Nom, en Egypte, ap. Mélusine,
viii, 10 (1897), pp. 229-231 ‘‘The hammering of the name wasa
veritable murder . . . only the names of people condemned to
death, or disgraced were hammered out... .”

4

50 Kings and Gods of Egypt

ee o to that of (\-3*$8—— ] Khounaton

(‘he who is liked by the god Aton”?).

Probably there was a desperate resistance on the
part of the priesthood of Amon, but we possess no
particulars of it. Much later, when, after the
death of the Reformer-King, the priests of Amon,
powerful once more, celebrated the virtues of

_ outa ho restored to them their

rl Egypt
after the revolution in the following terms:

The world was as in the times of chaos, the lands of
the gods lay waste Irom Elephanta to the Delta; their
holy shrines were crumbling away and their fields
passing into ruin; rank weeds grew therein; the stores
were pillaged, and the sacred courts were open to the
passers-by. The world was corrupted; the gods were
ready to depart, turning their backs upon men, their
hearts filled with disgust for their own creatures. ?

The shadows of this picture are too dark.

* The meaning of this name (hitherto translated glory or spirit of
the god Aton) has recently been established by Sethe (Aegyptische
Zeitschrift, xliv, p. 117). M. Schaefer remarks that the King
Minephtah Siphtah will take a name constructed on the same
plan as Khounrd, ‘‘he who is pleasing to RA.”’ As Sethe states it,
Er ee

__Amenop 1S t érence to Amon: ‘Repose, peace of

AMmOn.”— oy ee eee

Legrain, La grande stéle de Touténkhamon, ap. Recueil, exIxe
p- 167.

I, Amenophis IV.—Khounaton.
(Buste du Louvre).

II. Painted Pavement from the Palace of
El-Amarna.

(Petrie, Tell el-Amarna).
Plate VII.

Revolution of Amenophis IV 51

Where the text says gods, we must understand
the god Amon. The persecution of a single god
and of a single form of worship did not imply the
ruin of other divinities and other priesthoods.*
It was against the overwhelming omnipotence of
Amon of Thebes that the King had rebelled, trying
to supersede him by an older divinity, who had
been kept in the background by the dominating
Theban god, one, who was less local, but perhaps
more familiar and congenial to all, the god Aton,
whose name now serves to designate the king and
the capital of Egypt.

Aton |" is the solar disc; he is the tangible
and visible form of Ra the Sun, the oldest perhaps,
and the most popular of Egyptian gods. He is
represented under the form of a disc, the centre
of which is decorated by a raised ureus; the rays
of the disc stretch to the earth like arms, terminat-
ing in hands; these hands take the offerings from
the altars, hold the sign of life to the nostrils of the
King, hold him and his kin in their embraces.’

It is still a disputed question whether or not Khounaton
proscribed the worship of other gods than Amon. Breasted
remarks that in the tomb of Ramose, and elsewhere, not only has

the name of Amon been carefully hammered away, but, also, the
word gods (Zeitschrift, xl, p. 109). See, nevertheless, what is said

post., p. 57: ‘ eo an
2 The representation of the radiating disc which is characteristic

52 Kings and Gods of Egypt

In a word, Aton bore the same relationship to
Khounaton as Amon did to Amenophis—a father,
a benefactor, but no longer a tyrannical god.

The King avoids the mistake of reconstituting
for the service of Aton a priesthood on the pattern
of the Theban clergy. Aton, like Ra, originated _

in Heliopolis, so his high-priest bears the same
" title (Our maa, ‘“‘chief prophet’’) as does RA. But
the King was careful not to entrust the guardian-
ship of the new worship to the old priestly town

of Heliopolis. It was in a new town we =

Khoutaton, ‘‘the horizon of Aton,” the modern
El-Amarna, on the right bank of the Nile, between
Memphis and Thebes, that he laid the foundations
of the temple, with a central obelisk dedicated to
the god Aton. In Nubia, near to the third cataract,
he built another town Gem-Aton; and in Syria, a
city of which we know not the name. Both
served in subjugated territories as capitals for the
new state god. As for the revenues necessary
for the support of the clergy and the god, the King
administered them himself in his capacity of
““prophet-in-chief \to Ra-Harmakhis’’* and ‘‘chief

of the monuments of Amenophis IV is nevertheless personal to the
King. The radiating disc already appeared in the monuments of his
father Amenophis III (Lepsius, Denkmdiler, iii, 91, g). After Ame-
nophis IV, the use of this decorative motive disappeared entirely.

t Lepsius, Denkmdler, iii, 110, 7. Harmakhis means Horus
in the horizon.

Revolution of Amenophis IV 53

seer of Aton.’’ This two-fold title is all the more
interesting as it demonstrates the material fusion
of the cults of Harmakhis and of Aton, and the
concentration in the hands of the king of the double
administration of their temporal revenues. We
know, moreover, from a statuette in the Turin
Museum that the relations between the family of
Amenophis IV and the priesthood of Heliopolis
were of long standing. A brother of the Queen
Tii, consequently the uncle of the Reformer, had
been “‘chief prophet in Heliopolis,” and at the
same time ‘‘second prophet of Amon.’’* In the
capacity of heads of the Heliopolitan and Atonian
priesthood, the uncle and nephew administered
the endowments provided for Aton, and the wealth
of Amon that had been confiscated to the service
of Aton. The reform carried out by the King
consists in a secularisation of Amonian property,
a recapture of the lands of the priesthood, and
disestablishment of a state religion to the profit of
another. However towards the end of his reign,
Pharaoh assigned to his most devoted adviser,
Merira,? the office of high-priest and chief prophet
of Aton; but he was cautious not to bestow upon

tL. Borchardt, Ein Onkel Amenophis IIT als Hoherpriester von
Heliopolis, ap. Aegyptische Zeitschrift, xliv, p. 97-

2 Breasted, History, p. 367
3 Breasted, Ancient Records, ii, p. 405.

54 Kings and Gods of Egypt

him any civil office and limited his powers to the
domain of religion, entrusting to others' financial
and judicial administration. The high-priest of
Aton is thus restored to his original position of a
deputy and subordinate of the king. The danger
of his ever becoming a menace to the crown has
passed away.

The Pharaoh not only undertakes the manage-
ment of the estates of the new god, he organises
the doctrine and formulates the new tenets. The
revolution he has accomplished is not alone politi-
cal and economical. After having regained the
control of the priesthood and the administration of
church revenues, he becomes the Keformer of the
Faith, and shapes a system of belief according to a
more human ideal.

In order to achieve his aim, the King probably
covered the land of Egypt with temples, dedicated
to Aton. Of these buildings, which were nearly
everywhere destroyed after the death of the King,
there remain scarcely more than a few ruins at
Thebes, Hermonthis, Memphis, Heliopolis;?_ but

*The most powerful among them was the vizier Ramose

(Breasted, Ancient Records, ii, p. 385 et seq.) who was not a high-
priest of Aton.

*See the texts quoted by Breasted, Aeygptische Zeitschrift, xl,
jo UG

Revolution of Amenophis IV 55

Khoutaton, the capital of the cult of Aton, pre-
cisely because it was abandoned by the successors
of the Reformer-King, still exhibits ruins where we
trace palaces and temples,’ and above all, tombs,
wherein the favourites of Khounaton have repre-
sented for us the King in his relations to them.
We see, here, the King, visiting his people, receiv-
ing them in his palace, appearing in the balcony
to throw down to them crowns and necklaces as
tokens of his royal favour, and this favour he
reserves, especially for those “‘ who have

attentively to-his-words,and who have understood

and practised his teaching.”’? In several tombs,
‘these favoutites-have—inr order to show their
zeal, reproduced verses of the hymns composed by
Pharaoh himself in honour of Aton. These hymns
are for us texts of a unique and inestimable value.
In translating them, we gain an insight intothe large
enthusiastic, mystic mind which conceived such an
exalted ideal as underlies the worship of Aton.

KHOUNATON’S HYMN. 3

Adoration of Harmakhis who rises in the horizon in his

t Petrie, Tell el Amarna, 1894; cf. Davies, The Rock-Tombs of
El-Amarna, i-vi, 1902-1908; and: Bouriant, Legrain, Jéquier,
Monuments pour servir a histoire du culte d’ A tonou, i, 1903.

2 Breasted, History, p. 367-

3 Breasted, De hymnis in solem sub rege Amenophide IV con-
ceptis, 1894.

56 Kings and Gods of Egypt

name of ‘‘Ardour of the solar disc ...”, by King
Khounaton and Queen Nefer-Neferiu-Aton.

He says:

Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of heaven,
O thou, Aton, initiator of life.

When thou risest in the east, thou fillest the earth
with thy beauty; thou art beautiful, sublime, and
exalted above earth. Thy beams envelop the lands
and all thou hast made. As thou art RA (the creator)
thou conquerest what they give forth, and thou
bindest them with the bonds of thy love. Thou art
afar off, but thy beams are upon (touch) the earth;
when thou art on high, the day follows thy footprints.

Night:

When thou settest in the western horizon of heaven,
the world is in darkness like the dead. They lie in
their houses, their heads are wrapt up, their nostrils
stopped, their eyes blind (eye sees not to eye); their
chattels may be robbed even from under their heads,
and they know it not. Then, every lion cometh
forth from his den, every serpent stings, the night is
dark like an oven, the land lies in silence; he who
made them has gone to rest in his horizon.

Day, Mankind:

The day breaks, the sky brightens, thou shinest as
Aton in his day; the darkness flees, for thou sendest
forth thy rays, the Two Lands are rejoicing. Men
awake and stand upon their feet, for thou liftest them
up; they bathe their limbs, they take their clothing,
their upraised hands adore thy dawning, the whole
earth is set on her labour.

Revolution of Amenophis TV 57

Animals:

The cattle are settled in their pastures, all trees and
plants flourish, the birds flutter in the marshes, their
wings uplifted in adoration to thy double; all the
flocks leap upon their feet ;’ all the birds nestled away,
they live, when thou dawnest upon them.

Waters:

The ships go forth, both North and South, upon the
river, for every highway is open at thy rising; the
fishes in the river swim up to greet thee; thy rays
pierce the depths of the great sea.

Men and Animals:

Thou art he who createst the germ in women, and
makest the seed in men, who makest the son to live
in the body of his mother and soothest him that he
may not cry, and nursest him in his mother’s womb,
who givest breath to animate all thy creatures. When
the child falleth from the womb, on the day of his
birth, thou openest his mouth in speech, thou providest
for his needs.

When the chicklet is in the egg, stirring within its
shell, thou givest to it breath therein, that it may live.
When thou hast made it strong it cometh forth from
the egg, chirping its joy to live, and it runneth on its
feet when it hath come forth.

How manifold are thy works! Thou didst create the
earth in thy heart(when thou wast alone),the earth with
peoples, herds, and flocks, all that are upon theearth
that go upon their fect, all that are on high, that fly with
their wings, the foreign lands, Syria, N ubia, Egypt.

1See an illustration of this passage on Plate WANA 2 ir @
fragment of pavement in the palace of El-Amarna.

2 Notice that the King in this enumeration names first the
strange countries. Cf. post., p. 60.

58 Kings and Gods of Egypt

Thou settest every man in his place, creating the
things necessary to him; every one has his belongings
and possessions; their speech is in diverse tongues,
they are varied in form and colour of skin. Thou,
the master of choice, madest different (from us) the
strange peoples.

Thou createst the Nile in the other world, thou
bringest it (upon the earth) at thy desire, to preserve
thy people alive ... thou hast placed a Nile in
heaven, that it may fall for them, making lakes upon
the hills (great) like the sea; thou waterest the fields
among their countries, thou sucklest every portion
of land.

Thou madest the seasons in order to create all thy
works, winter to make cool (thy creatures), summer
(to give them warmth). Thou madest the distant
heaven that thou mayest rise therein and behold
from afar all thou didst make, thou alone. Thou
risest in thy form as living Aton, thou breakest forth
radiating, shining afar off and returning, thou didst
create all the forms through thyself alone, nomes,
cities, settlements, roads, and rivers. All eyes behold
thee over them, for thou art the Aton, the disc of the
day, over the earth.

Thou art in my heart; there is none other that
knoweth thee, save me, thy son, Khounaton....
O thou by whom, when thou risest, men live, by whom
when thou settest, they die, . . . raise them up for
thy son, who cometh forth from thy substance,
Khounaton.

Every reader of the Hymn of Khounaton will be

struck by the lofty y_inspiration and beauty of

Revolution of Amenophis IV 59

expression, for which we have hitherto been used to
turn back to no other example than the Bible. It
is, perhaps, less fair, to Stribute to it the merit of
originality that the majority of Egyptologists find
therein. They admit that the Hymn of Khounaton
expresses concepts new in the theological literature

of ot; the adoration of a god whose epithets are

1-powerful creator; the expression of a
feeling for nature which associates man with the
animals, plants, water, and the earth in the worship
of the one god, the unique Providence of everything
that exists, of everything that has life. These
sentiments, even the form of their expression, are
they not something quite new in Egypt and do they
not date precisely from the time of Khounaton?
To answer this question, it would be necessary to
possess other hymns, of an earlier date than those
of El-Amarna. A comparison of the two texts
would enable us to judge of the originality of this
one. But the religious poetry before the XVIIIth
dynasty is composed—so far as is at present as-
certained—only of very short pieces, little hymns
graven on funeral stele generally addressed to
Osiris or to RA, but owing to limited space, of very
circumscribed wording, which does not allow of
lyrical development. There is, however, a monu-
ment, affording a long hymn of earlier date than

60 Kings and Gods of Egypt

our Hymn of Khounaton. It is a stela preserved
in our French National Library, which, so far,
has never been compared with the texts of EI-
Amarna, though it is of high interest. A Hymn
to Osiris was engraved on this stela by order of a
chief overseer of the flocks, Amenemhait, of whose
name the first part Amen was hammered out, at the
time when Khounaton caused the name of Amon to
be destroyed wherever it appeared. Chabas, who
has published this stela in a masterly way,* con-
cludes: ‘‘We ought certainly to consider that this
monument is earlier than Khounaton.’’ The long
Hymn to Osiris, engraved on the stela, proves, first,
that the cult and also the prayers to Osiris, Isis,
Horus, Atoum, Geb,? Nouit, gods whose names
have not been hammered out on the stela, have
been respected by the iconoclasts in the pay of
Khounaton. We notice, next, that Osiris is
adored here as the first of the gods, as the creator
of all that exists, earth, water, plants, animals,
men, and gods; as the Supreme Good, the Provi-
dence whose care embraces all creatures and ex-
tends over every part of the universe. To my mind,
the result of a comparison shows that the religious

« Bibliotheque Egyptologique, ix, p. 95.
2 Geb is the correct reading of the divine name formerly read
Seb.

Revolution of Amenophis IV 61

and poetical matter, developed in the hymns of
Khounaton, consists of topics already employed
in Egyptian literature and probably familiar to
every one. ‘The originality’’ lent to the hymns

of Khounaton is probably like new wine in old

bottles; it expresses old beliefs in new rhythms,

natsehseniemninieans

and gives a touch, as far as we can judge, more
vivid and personal to subjects treated by older
writers.

It would appear that this point of view is con-
firmed by other facts. If the hymns are few before
the time of Amenophis IV, those which have come
to us in later compilations are very numerous.
But these hymns, dedicated to Amon, to Thot, to
Phtah, reproduce, almost literally a great number
of passages characteristic of the hymns to Aton.
Like the god of El-Amarna, Amon is called the
one and only god, the creator of the earth, water,
an I he has also with his mighty harid
modelled the different races of men, varying in
colour and in language. Ought we to conclude
that the hymns to » Aton even in their most charac-
teristic expressions have been plagiarised by the
priests of a rival god, the Theban Amon?— If these
expressions were peculiar to Atonian literature, it
is astonishing that they were not dishonoured and
prohibited like the memory of Aton himself. It

t4

62 Kings and Gods of Egypt

seems more reasonable to admit that the school of
El-Amarna drew its developments from a source
that fed both the rival cults. The gods, who
successively gained predominance in different
historic capitals, were extolled in hymns of the
same inspiration, but varying slightly in expression
according to the moral standard or intellectual
ideal of the period.

This granted, it must be acknowledged that
Khounaton grasped these universal topics with
uncommon fervidness and developed them into
sublime philosophy.

The King’s desire seems to have been this: to
direct the adoration of the Egyptians towards a

& -whe.would not be the artificial creator of a
aoe priesthood peculiar to one town, or exclusively

ional in character, but towards a god incar-

nating a force in nature, and therefore able to be

uifiversally understood and revered.

To this end, the King chose the sun, the primitive
god of humanity, whose power, by turn, merciful
or pitiless, is Howhere so overwhelming as in the
East. This god was no longer presented to men
as in former times, under the quaint guise of an
heraldic falcon LN (Horus or Harmakhis); but as
a rayed disc fi. the natural manifestation of the .
divine energy, a hieroglyphic that all men, Egyp-

=

Revolution of Amenophis IV 63

tians or strangers, even we moderns, could read
and understand at first glance.

This god, who personifies motion, light, heat
(in his name of ‘Ardour, which is in the Disc”’),
is verily the benefactor and the giver of life to all
that exists. The hymn sets forth with a naive
sincerity, a freshness of expression, and a profusion
of images, rushing forth from the depths of primi-
tive emotion, the sentiments of adoration, more
or less conscious or confused, which are stirred in
men, animals, stones, or plants, when face to face
with Him who dispels the night, scares away the
wild beasts, fosters the growth of all vegetation,
and protects the race of men.

Such sentiments are common to all peoples; but
it is perhaps the first time in the history of the
world that we see a king calling to the strangers,
Semites and Nubians, his newly-conquered sub-
jects, to come and worship, side by side, with his
own people, Aton, the Father of All. For the
first time, religion is regarded as a bond which
binds together men of different race, language, and

colour. The god of Khounaton does not distin-
eT ee
guish between Egyptians and Barbarians. All <
men are equally his sons and should be considered

as brothers.
Thus there is at the centre of the universe a

64 Kings and Gods of Egypt

fostering and harmonious Energy which provides
for the needs of all living beings, and plays the
Thought. Such ideas were in the air at this time
and there is a text, presumably written at a very
ancient date, where the god Phtah, described as
Aton is here, is called ‘‘the intelligence and the
tongue of the gods, source of the thoughts of every
god, of every man, and every animal. at

This god, with whom the King lives in familiar
intercourse, as a child with his father, ‘‘whom the
King alone—like a prophet inspired by a revela-
tion—is able to understand and make known to
men,’’ is a god for all humanity, clothed in a
reasonable and beautiful form. Khounaton made
him god of the Egyptian Empire at a very oppor-
tune moment, when Egypt, extending her con-
quests beyond her frontiers, incorporates new
subjects in Syria and Nubia.

From this point of view, the attempt of Ameno-
phis IV was something more than a political
reaction against the encroaching ambition of the
high-priests of Amon. The reform of Ameno-
phis IV was at the core a return to a more human
form of religion—probably to an archaic ideal
which had already flourished in the days of the

* Breasted, ap. Aegyptische Zeitschrift, xxxix, p. 39 et seg.

Revolution of Amenophis IV 65

Ancient Empire, when the god Ra ruled over the
gods. of the living.

Even as it happened in modern times, this
return to a more simple religious sentiment was
likewise followed by a renewal in the realm of art.

There is a return to a sincere and realistic ob
servation of nature. As the power of his cen

increased, Amon became a haughty, distaft,1n-

yielding godhead, whose influence affected the
Theban artists, on whom devolved the task
of decorating the temples and chiselling the
statues of the kings. Their art degenerated into
stiff solemnity. Their technical mastery is not
“nlivened_by _ inspiration, and they reflect in
bare austere lines the awful majesty of the god.
Khounaton, a sincere man, faithful to his ideals,
withdrew his favour from this Theban school; he
encouraged provincial artists of less skill but more
naive mind, who had remained nearer to nature.
As the Pharaoh was in his person and in his acts
the habitual theme of the artists, he demanded that
he and his family should be represented _as they
really were, with their physical imperfections, in
the intimacy of family life as well as amidst the
pomps of the court. Hence these realistic pictures
that we find in the tombs of his favourites, where
5

66 Kings and Gods of Egypt

the King appears in familiar attitudes, surrounded
by his wife and his daughters, in friendly inter-
course with the owners of these tombs. Court
festivals, rejoicings over honours conferred upon a
faithful servant, ceremonies in the temples, such
as the mourning procession led by the King on the
death of his beloved daughter Bakitaton—such
were the subjects chosen. These subjects were
treated by the artists of the Khoutaton School
with the same instinct for picturesque and lively
detail, that freshness and frankness of expression,
which shines forth from the hymns analysed above.
It was the same spirit which inspired at that period
both liturgical poetry and the plastic arts.

It happens that several of these artists exhibit
the defects of their qualities. Perhaps their
technical skill was inferior to the directness of
their vision, and they failed to be: good artists,
while remaining true to nature; several of them
have given us portraits of the King and his rela-'
tives, which are little less than caricatures. But
at least one artist united the realistic tendencies
of the new school with the traditions of the pure
and classic style of the Thebans. To him, we
owe the statue and bust of Amencphis IV (Plate -
VII, 1), perhaps, also, the head of the little girl,
and the torso of a young girl (in all probability

I. Amenophis IV. when Young, and
His Wife.

(Berlin).

II. Khounaton in Later Years, and His
Family.
(Berlin—Spiegelberg, Agypt, Kunst).
Plate VIII.

Revolution of Amenophis IV __ 67

one of the royal princesses), works, which by
the perfection of their modelling, the accuracy
of observation, and the harmonious attainment
of life-like execution, rank among the marvels of
classical art and of sculpture of all ages.
Amenophis IV reigned scarcely sixteen years,
and, perhaps,—if we should judge from certain
of his effigies (Plate VIII, 2),— the struggle with
the priests of Amon broke down his heal
_brought upon hima-premature old age. His work
did not survive him. His second successor, Tou-
tankhamon, son of another wife of Amenophis III,
restored the worship-of Amon and the power of the _

igh-priests, preparing thus, in a not far distant

sion of the priest-kings of Thebes. é temples
of Aton were in their turn sacked, and the memory
of Khounaton was dishonoured and reviled. Inan
official document of the XIXth dynasty, his name
is not mentioned; he is designated by a periphrasis: S]
“The fallen one, the criminal of Khoutaton.’’?
~The workundertakenr by Khounaton had been
perhaps premature, at least over-hasty. Nothing
endures without the aid of time. Khounaton
contrived to impart within a few years, to his
subjects and to the priests, his fervid faith, the

Loret-Moret, Inscription de Mes, ap. Zeitschrift, xxxix, p. 24.

68 Kings and Gods of Egypt .

ardour which consumed his own soul, a reflection
of the solar disc. Would and could his reforms
survive him? The same question arises with
every reformer in history, at the outburst of every
revolution. Generally, such sweeping reforms do
not last; the stream of the past, dammed up for
a moment, the force of tradition, for a moment
enchained, return with a formidable rush to sub-
merge the yet unstable work of the revolutionists.
Thus it was with Amenophis IV. Even the new
art, momentarily revivified, galvanised into a
Renaissance, lapsed again into a stiff and hieratical
solemnity Pee PIS EE IE
~The reform of Amenophis IV hardly affected the
development of Egyptian civilisation, but if it
counts for little in the history of Egypt, it counts
infinitely in the history of humanity, For the
first time, perhaps, has man worthily sung his God.
And for the first time, in the hymns of El-Amarna,
there is expressed with sublime elevation, a feeling
of gratitude for a God who is a universal Provi-
dence, who extends His care not only to men of
diverse races but to animals and plants, a feeling
of fraternity with the humblest being in Nature,
who, endowed with life, may join in giving forth
his praise to his Creator.

CHAPTER [it
THE PASSION OF OSIRIS

OF all the gods, called into being by tne hopes
and fears of men who dwelt in times of yore on the
banks of the Nile, Osiris was the most popular.
His appearance surprises us least of all, when the
procession of Egyptian divinities passes before our
eyes; this falcon is Horus; this goose, Geb or
Amon; that crocodile is Sebek; yonder bull is
Hapi, the Nile, and the hippopotamus is Ririt;
the pair of lions is Shou and Tafnouit; the vulture
and serpent are the goddesses of the South and
of the North. Stranger still are those divinities
whose human bodies are surmounted by the heads
of beasts; from the shoulders of Thot arise the
slender neck and the long bill of the ibis; Khnoum
wears a ram’s head with twisted horns; Sekhit
has the terrifying muzzle of a lioness; and Bast
carries the head of a cat with,ears pricked up and
gleaming eyes.

By the side of these animals, fetishes, and totems

69

70 Kings and Gods of Egypt

of the ancient tribes, raised to the rank of national
divinities in more modern times, there appeared
from the earliest days of United Egypt, a god
whose worship became common to all the cities.
Osiris, in the beginning a multiform fetish, some-
times a tree, sometimes a bull, detaches himself
from his totemic origins and at a very early date
assumes a purely human form. Wherever shone
forth the calm beauty of this face whose oval was
prolonged by the false beard and tall white mitre,
wherever was seen the melancholy outline of this
body, draped in a shroud, the two fists crossed
upon his breast and clasping the ox-herd’s whip—
and the shepherd’s crook, the Egyptians from
every province recognised the “chief” of mankind,

the “Ruler of Eternity,” a o by reason of
his visible shape was nearly akin to man (Plate
TXGte

siris had lived on earth among men. What
manner of life this had been the priests knew but
did not readily reveal. The hieroglyphic texts

teem with allusions to the events eeds of the
earthly life of Osiris, but no complete record of
them has come down to us. Is this silence to be
! ue ute urrounding the god

whose name . not be uttered’? Happily

pth

The Passion of Osiris ar

“

for us, however, if the Egyptians are silent, the
Greeks venerated Osiris no less than the Egyptians,
and, in the traditions gathered together by Herod-
otus, Diodorus, and Plutarch, we are able through
the omissions and misunderstandings to form an
idea of what the Osirian legend was.

Osiris was son of the god Geb, the Earth, and the
goddess Nouit, the Heaven, and he succeeded
this father on the throne of the Two Egypts. This
was in the time of the divine dynasties. Ra the
creator of the world and his descendants, Shou and
Geb, had already ruled over men; none of the
three had known death, but, overtaken by old
age, discouraged by the ingratitude of men, they
had withdrawn to the heavens, leaving to a more
able god the task of disciplining turbulent hu-
manity. Osiris was the teacher awaited since

the creation of the world. When he was born; a4]

voice proclaimed that the Lord of all things had
come upon the earth.” “A certain Pamyles of
Thebes received an “‘annunciation” of the glad
tidings; while going to bring water from the temple
of Jupiter (Amon), he heard a voice ‘‘which
commanded him to proclaim that Osiris, the great

: Unless stated to the contrary, that which follows between
quotation marks is quoted from the tract De Tside et Osiride
attributed to Plutarch. ‘The master of all things” is an Egyp-
tian epithet, neb r zer. eS aad Wa

72 Kings and Gods of Egypt

king, the benefactor of the whole world, had just
been born.’”’ By reason of this, the gods entrusted
to Pamyles the task of bringing up the child,
moulding and preparing him for his high destiny.

Osiris succeeded where his fathers had failed.
But he achieved success mainly through the help
and magic charms of Isis, hs sister-wife (Plate
IX, 2). The divine pair overcame all obstacles
by the attraction of beauty, knowledge, and kind-
ness. It was imperative that a ruler should come.
Left to themselves by their creator, men lived in
savagery, fighting for their food with the wild
beasts. Osiris taught them to discern the plants
that were good for food—wheat, barley, the vine,
which grew in confusion with the other plants.
Wondering mankind viewed Isis cutting sheaves
of corn and kneading flour. Osiris pressed the
grapes, drank the first cup of wine, and where

was un o the culture of the vine,
a he taught the people how to make a fermented
drink! from barley.’’ Henceforward, men ceased
to feed on one another and with cannibalism
endemic warfare disappeared.

Men were as yet ignorant of the riches hidden
in the earth. Osiris taught them how to find the
veins of metal running through the ore; under his

1 After Diodorus, i, 14-16.

il

:
i

Osiris, Lord of the Occident. II. Isis, the Divine Mother.
(Musée du Caire).

Plate IX.

The Passion of Osiris 73

direction, they worked in gold and brass; “they
made weapons wherewith to slay the wild beasts,
instruments wherewith to cultivate the land, and,
later, statues for the gods.’” When he had pro-
vided men with food and the means of self-defence,
Osiris initiated them into a social and intellectual
life; he gave them a capital, Thebes of the Hundred
Gates; made laws for the community, taught them
ethics and the worship of the gods. In this task,
he had an associate, Thot, the god of the arts
and of letters, who, by the invention of the signs
of speech and writing, made possible the diffusion
of knowledge and the continuance of progress.
Both of them tried to soften manners, and trained
the minds of men by the discipline of the exact
sciences, by the rhythm of games and the arts,
by the cadence of music. __At last, men learned to —A
read the starr sky, a i the sense \V
of a life which went beyond this earthly destiny.

It still remained to carry civilisation to the rest
of mankind. Leaving the government of Egypt
in the hands of his wife, Isis, Osiris gathered to- pods
gether a large army and travelled through the
land, teaching men how to cultivate the cereals.
He rarely had recourse to arms; men came to
him, drawn thither by his speech, spellbound by
the charms of the dance, subdued by music.

74 Kings and Gods of Egypt

Everywhere, Osiris came as a beneficent goa. He
was called the ‘‘Good Being”? (Ounnefer),* he

who devotes himself to the salvation _o :

Nevertheless, on his return to Egypt,the reward

| a which awaited the benefactor was treachery and
death. He fell, not by the jealousy of the gods,
like Prometheus, giver of fire; he perished by
ingratitude and the spirit of evil.

Side by side with ‘Osiris, lived his brother, the
impious Seth-Typhon,? even as Evil lives near to

Good. Legend relates to us the infernal plot
arranged by Seth with the aid of sixty-two ac-
complices. Seth invited Osiris to a feast at his
house.

He had secretly taken the measurements of the
figure of Osiris, and had caused to be made a chest
of the same size, very richly ornamented; and it was
brought into the festal hall. All the guests having
examined it with admiration, Seth said to them, as if
in jest, that he would present it to any one among
them, who, lying down inside it, found he was of the
same size. Each having in his turn tried, without its
exactly fitting any one of them, Osiris also got in and
stretched himself out. Immediately, the conspirators

‘Perhaps this word originally signified the Good Hare, which
would be another form of Osiris as a totemic animal.

According to the most recent researches, those of M. Loret, it
would follow that Seth or Setesh 4 was, in his totemic form,
a wild hare.

~ The Passion of Osiris 75 Dorm

ran, closed the chest, and while some nailed down the
lid, others poured molten lead along the chinks so that
it should be hermetically sealed; after which they

carried it to the Nile, whence it w to
sea.*

As soon as Isis heard of this “great affliction,”
Q Ne she cut her hair, clad herself in mourning garb,
OS Lg A ae cree eh

ran hither and thither, a prey to the most cruel
anguish, asking every one she met concerning the
chest for which she-was searching; at length she met
two little children who had by chance seen the ac-
complices of Seth pushing the chest into the water
and who told her on which branch of the Nile it
had happened. The waters Dacca ried the chest to
Byblos in Syria, the town Gaon a bush hid
it from the eyes. Owing to the virtue of the divine
corpse, the bush increased so greatly in size and beauty
that its stem enclosed the chest and entirely concealed
it from view,? until a certain day when Malcandre,
the king of the country, cut the stem which hid the
chest in its bosom, and made from it one of the col-
umns in his palace.

« It was in the locality of Nedit, the site of which is unknown,
that Osiris was slain (Pyramide de Pépi IT, 1,1263. CE. Stéle de
Metternich, 1. 47).

2 De Iside et Osiride, 14-15. Concerning the chest cast into
the Nile, cf. the magic stele of the type of the Metternich stela
(published by Golenischeff, 1, 38 e seq.) the papyrus of the
Louvre, published by Chassinat (Recueil de travaux, xiv, p. 14),
and perhaps the Harris papyrus (cf. Schaefer, Aegyptische Zett-
schrift, xli, p. 81).

Beg

76 Kings and Gods of Egypt

Isis, warned by a heavenly revelation, came to
Byblos. She made herself known, the chest was
restored to her, she took it back to Egypt to the
city of Bouto.’

But this only exposed the corpse to fresh out-
rages. “Seth, hunting by moonlight, found the

chest, and having recognised _the iris
and thither.’’ Isis resumed her mournful quest;
‘She succeeded in recovering all the fragments of
the corpse save one,? which had been cast into the
river, and devoured by an oxyrhynchus. As
Isis found a piece of her husband’s body, she
raised a tomb over it upon the very spot, and she
allowed the priests of each of the fourteen sanc-
tuaries to believe that they possessed the whole
body of Osiris. .
The woeful ‘‘passion’’’ of Osiris ended as his
body found a resting-place in the tomb. But
a ig ae ec Se
‘Seth has shown (ap. Aegyptische Zeitschrift, xlv, pp. 12-14)
that the episode of Byblos, the details of which are only known to
us from Greek sources, is yet fundamentally Egyptian in its origin.

Cf. Lefébure, Osiris @ Byblos, ap. Sphinx, v-vi. Isidore Lévy,
Malcandre, ap. Revue archéologique, 1905.

2 This was the phallus. Note the transposition of this episode
to The Tale of the Two Brothers (trans. Maspero, Les contes popu-
laires del’ Egypte ancienne, 3e éd., p. 9).

3The expression occurs in Herodotus, who speaks of “the

representation of the sufferings of Him (Osiris)”’ 7a delknda rOv
mwabéwy duro, (ii, 171).

- The Passion of Osiris a7

divine justice still claimed atonement while man-
kind repented their ingratitude. Horus, the son
of Osiris, with the help of Thot, of Anubis, and of
pious men, undertook interminable wars for the
purpose of baffling Seth and his allies of their
undue heritage of the world. In the end they
were victorious. Good triumphed over Evil,
and the triumph will endure as long as the de-
scendants of Osiris, gods or Pharaohs, sit upon
the ‘‘throne of Horus.”’ But will this beneficent
existence of Osiris, his final sacrifice for men, be
fruitless? Will his passage across the earth be
nothing more than the flash of a meteor? This
would not conform to the didactic spirit of the
popular legends. Let us see how that spirit

developed the legend, and what matertat-and_

aca ea URINE IEE eapers ip: PET le ce aiT.
moral benefits gods and men derived from t
sufferings of Osiris.

Thus far, the gods had not known death. When
RAy the first god-king left the earth for heaven, his
white hairs, his dribbling mouth, his trembling
limbs, witnessed to his decrepitude. But, in the
case of the gods, old age did not lead to death.
The murder of Osttis by Seth revealed to them
that they were not invulnerable to the attacks of
another god; at the first contest between the sons

me

78 Kings and Gods of Egypt

of RA, at a fresh attack of evil, the gods would be
confronted, like Osiris, with the hideous fatality
of death. How might this danger be avoided?
There would be no safety for them till their master
in knowledge, Osiris, should be restored to life.

Isis, the companion and inspiration of the dead
god, his sister Nephthys, Thot and Anubis, who
shared his thoughts, Horus, his beloved son, who
had inherited his wisdom, found in the teachings
of Osiris himself, the secret which would recall
him to a new life and a better one—that would
make him invulnerable to a second death. Plu-
tarch explains and sums up the Osirian knowledge
in these short words: “‘Isis invented the remedy
which confers immortality.’’ In fact, she suc-
ceeded in transforming the corpse of Osiris in-
to a resuscitated god, by the invention of magic
funeral rites.

Such rites as had been instituted by Isis, “‘the
first time,’’ were performed at the great festivals
of Osiris and of the dead. The most important
were celebrated at the beginning of winter, from
the 12th to the 30th Choiak, in sixteen of the large
towns of Egypt.t At Sais, Herodotus saw ‘‘the
Egyptians perform by night the representation

tV. Loret, Les Fétes d’Osiris au mois de Choiak, ap. Recueil de
travaux relatifs dl archéologie et dla philologie égyptiennes, t. iii-v.

. The Passion of Osiris 79

of the sufferings undergone by Him; they called

’

them the Mysteries.” It was a sacred drama,
played by the priests and priestesses before all the
people, who took part in the events of the action.
But Herodotus reveals nothing of what he has
seen: ‘‘Upon these Mysteries, all of which, with-
out exception, are known to me, let my lips guard
a religious silence!”* I shall now attempt to
give a general idea of these Osirian rites, as it can
be gathered from the texts in the tombs and the
temples.

The opening scene represented the death of the
god. Some imitation was made of dismembering
a body and scattering its fragments abroad. Then
Isis set out on her quest; ‘‘she sought Osiris without
ceasing; she wandered to and fro, lamenting, and
rested not till she had found him.’’? Horus, the
son of the dead king, Thot and Anubis, his friends,
take part in the “‘quest’’; the episodes of which are
summarised in the sacramental words quoted by
Herodotus.

When Osiris had been found, the play proceeded
to bring together his dismembered body. Dio-
dorus relates how Isis restored to life each member

: Herodotus, ii, 170, of. ii, 62. See C. Sourdille, Hérodote ef

la religion del’ Egypte, p. 67.
2 Stole de la Bibliotheque nationale (Hymne a Osiris ll. 14-15).

80 Kings and Gods of Egypt

of the mutilated god, as it was recovered. ‘‘She
enclosed each fragment in a life-size effigy of
Osiris, made of wax and perfumes.”” This suggests
a magic process, the first step of which is to fashion
an image of Osiris. The fictitious body, on con-
tact with the piece of flesh placed within it, was
supposed to become alive, according to magic
creed. After these brief and partial obsequies,
the family of Osiris effected in detail an entire
reconstruction of the divine body. The Rituals?
state that Horus made for Osiris a large statue
(we would term it a ‘“‘mummy’’) by joining
together all the parts that Seth had severed.
“Thou hast taken back thy head,” say Isis and
Nephthys to their brother; ‘‘thou hast bound up
thy flesh; thy vessels have been given back to thee;
thou hast regained thy members.’’ The gods
take part in this difficult operation. Geb, the
father of Osiris, presides over the ceremony; RA
sends from heaven the goddesses Hawk and
Ureus, those who encircle like a crown the fore-
head of the gods, “in order to put the head
of Osiris in its place and to join it to his neck.”
The description we read in the Rituals was
carried out faithfully in practice. At the solemn
festivals of Osiris, two complete statues of the
* A. Moret, Rituel du culte divin, pp. 74-75.

ox 828 Id
“(I 9S op epdurey ‘sopAqy)
*peoq JojouunOQ—SIISO jo [ISI [elouny

Pa

The Passion of Osiris 81

god were fashioned from earth mingled with wheat,
incense, perfumes, and precious stones; but the
fragment of the body assigned by Isis to each
sanctuary was fashioned apart, and when the
priest brought the clay to pour it into the mould,
he recited these words: “I bring to Isis these
fragments of the mummy of Osiris.”

Near to the statue, now clad in the clinging
shroud which will henceforth be the characteristic
garb of Osiris, Isis and Nephthys, in mourning
robes, their hair unbound, their head and breast
bruised with repeated blows, intone a kind of
vocero, a funeral dirge. They implore Osiris
“to return to inhabit his reconstituted body”’*
(Plate X).

“Come to thy dwelling,’ says Isis, embracing
the feet of the mummy.

Thine enemies are not here. Come to thy dwelling!
Look at me! It is I, thy sister, whom thou lovest, do
not withdraw thyself from me. Come to thy house
even now! When I see thee no longer, my heart
laments for thee, my eyes search for thee, I run to and
fro, seeking to find thee. Come to her who loves thee, \
Ounnefer, come to thy sister, come to thy wife; O (A yp

—————
« The text has been published by J. de Horrack under the title: yo)

Les Lamentations d’Isis et Nephthys. The scene where Isis and
Nephthys recover Osiris is described in the texts of the Pyramid;
(Pépi, I, 1, 475 et seq.; édit. Sethe, formule 532). 7

6

82 Kings and Gods of Egypt

thou whose heart no longer beats, come to thy dwelling;
I am thy sister, born of thy mother, do not leave me;
the gods and men all together weep for thee; and I, I
call thee, raising my voice as high as the heavens. .*. .
Dost thou not hear my voice? It is I, thy sister,
whom thou didst love on earth, and thou lovest none
more than me.

And Nephthys, who guards the head of the
mummy, begins the next strophe:

O fair prince, come to thy dwelling to rejoice thy
heart; none of thine enemies is here; we are thy two

sisters who are at thy side to guard thy funeral bed
and to call thee with tears; turn thyself upon thy bed

to look upon thy sisters... . Thine enemies are
overcome. Here am I with thee in order to protect
thy limbs... . Come to see thy son_Horus, king

of the gods and men; he performs the rites for thee.
Thot pronounces the incantations, he calls thee with
the right formule; the children of Horus guard thy
flesh. .. . Thy soul receives the rites every day; the
gods, bearing the sacred vases, come to refresh thy
double. Come to thy sisters, our prince, our lord.
Withdraw thyself no longer from us.

These lamentations of Isis and Nephthys
express naively an idea common to all popular
languages. After death, Osiris goes away, far
from his body, far from his house, far from his
family. In order to bring him back to his corporeal
remains, he must be reassured, promised security,
cajoled with kind words. Thus entreated, he

The Passion of Osiris 83

returns at last to the fictitious body, modelled
by Horus.

The second act, as it were, of the drama thus
played, consists of the following scenes: The
return of the soul of Osiris and the resurrection of
the god. In order that Osiris should be reborn,

it was necessary, by magic rites, to imitate the .

phenomena of life, or to simulate the rebirth.
There were two ways of illustrating the rebirth of
Osiris—either to imitate in magic rites the return
of activity in the body or to simulate delivery.
In certain temples, the statue was placed for seven
days upon branches of sycamores. The explana-
tion appended to the sacred texts declares that this
was intended to recall the seven months passed by
Osiris in the womb of his mother Nouit, the goddess
of the sycamore. ‘‘One day counts for a month,
the sycamores are for Nouit.” According to the
laws of imitative magic, this gestation or this
simulated delivery, assures to the statue a veritable
rebirth. Some days later, the statue, made, as
has been said, of mould, harley, wheat, perfumes,
was buried under the holy sycamores, on the day
of the Feast of the Fields, that is, at seedtime
Some months later, the barley and the wheat will
spring up upon the statue of Osiris. The sym-

sea Kings and Gods of Egypt

bolism speaks for itself; the god returns to life
at the same time as the vegetation. *

The priests endeavoured to give a still more
precise picture of the mysteries which occurred
in the bosom of the earth. At Denderah and
Phil? are bas-reliefs which describe the phases
of the resurrection of Osiris. At first, we see the
corpse stretched upon a funeral bed with its face

Fic. 7.—Isis and Nephthys Resuscitating Osiris.
(From Georges Bénédite, Le Temple de Phile, pl. x1.)

tothesky. Isis and Nephthys, the two goddesses,
seem to be brooding over the corpse; their hands
urge on the recreation of the new skeleton; one
after the other, the legs, the body, the head appear
in answer to the call of the magnetic passes. At
last, the god seems resuscitated; he turns suddenly
upon his side, lifts his hand to his face, and raises
his head, smiling (Fig. 7). Farther on, another

tV. Loret, Les Fétes d’Osiris au mois de Choiak.
2 Mariette, Denderah, t. iv, Bénédite, Phile.

a | gE <W
er |

The Passion of Osiris 85

picture presents the symbolic plant-growth of
Osiris. The mummy is lying down; a priest q
sprinkles it with water, and from the body, thick
and tall, spring the new ears of grain. ‘‘This,”’
says the legend, ‘‘is the form of Him whose name
may not be uttered (Osiris), springing from the
The lapse of time required for illustrating
resurrection by plant-growth made the practice
of these rites inconvenient. The Osirian rebirth

tial for the sprouting-efthe-+ecds, So the cele-
bration of those Mysteries was confined to the
great annual fétes. In daily practice, it was
necessary to have recourse to summary and
potent rites, in order to bring about an in-
stantaneous resurrection of the dismembered god.
This was effected by simulating, side by side _
was sacrificed and its life taken, in order that this
life escaping from the body of the victim might
enter the body of Osiris. S t e victims

were men, prisoners of war, Libyans with red hair,
<a oe
recalling the image of Seth, who had red skin and

—

: Chambers of Osiris at Phila (Lanzone, Dizionario di mito- Abe

logia Egizia, Pl. CCLXI, and G. Bénédite, Le temple de Phila, Pl.
XL).

86 Kings and Gods of Egypt

hair; but usually a bull, a gazelle, or some horned
animal, sacred to Seth, was sufficient. After
slaughtering the animal, Horus seized the statue
of Osiris and laid it down in the skin of the beast;
likewise, on the eve of the funerals, a priest would
lay himself down in the bloody shroud as a proxy
for the dead. This was called ‘‘the rites of good
burial in the hide of Seth.’’* Diodorus relates a
variant upon this rite. ‘‘Isis gathered together
the scattered monte ot Osiris and enclosed them
_in a wooden cow.”’* Here is imitated the gesta-
tion, followed by delivery, indispensable prelimin-
aries to the new life promised to Osiris. (Even
to-day, in India, whena man has been contaminated
by contact with infidels, he believes he can be

reborn, purified, if he passes ecco
in order to simulate birth.3) A chant, recited by
On = 5 ran
Horus, sums up the meanings of these rites: I

«See the texts quoted by A. Moret, Du sacrifice en Egypte, in
the Revue de l'histoire des religions, January, 1908.

27,85. Herodotus (ii, 129 and 132) relates also that at the
festival of Osiris, there was exposed a cow of gilded wood in which
the King Mycerinus had enclosed the body of his dead daughter.
This cow was evidently an object appertaining to funeral rites.
The text of Denderah describes in detail ‘the cow of sycamore
wood, covered with linen, in which was placed the mummy of
the god” (Recueil, iv, p.26). The god was born anew like the
Sun, who, under the form of a calf, comes forth from the womb of
Nouit, the goddess-cow of the heavens. (Cf. A. Moret, Rituel
du culte divin, p. 208.)

3 Frazer, Le Totémisme, p. 48; Lefébure, Sphinx, viii, p. 47.

The Passion of Osiris 87

am Horus, who moulded his father, Osiris; I
fashion him who fashioned me; I cause to be born
him who caused me to be born; I call into life the
name (that is, the personality) of him who begat
me.’’?

The soul had not returned into this revivified
form. According to the legend, the soul of Osiris,
after the cruel mutilation of his body, had taken
its flight to the moon.? Among certain savage
races, the belief is still to be found, that the souls
of the dead reside in the moon. Osiris’s soul
followed the changes of the luminary, which each
month decreases, wanes, disappears, in order to
be reborn and to increase in size at the beginning
of the following month. The Egyptians explained
these vicissitudes thus: Seth, the implacable enemy
of Osiris, disguising himself as a tplack pig, or some
other animal, attacked, on_thef
each month, the luminary laden with souls, a d

aye

gradually devoured it and all it contained. It was

“the duty of Horus and Thot to set out to hunt,
to undertake the ‘‘sacred quest’’ and to capture
pig, bull, gazelle, or goose devoted to Seth; once
the animal was caught, Horus cut his neck and
made him ‘“‘disgorge what he had eaten,’’ and

1 A. Moret, Rituel du culte divin, p. 223, no. 2.
2[bid., p. 112. Cf. P. Pierret, Etudes égyptologiques, p. 87.

88 Kings and Gods of Egypt

triumphantly ‘‘took back to Osiris the recovered
soul.” ;

Bringing the head, the heart, and the thigh of
his victim close to the mouth of Osiris, Horus said
to his father: ‘I have led thy adversaries to thee;
I have cut off such a part from the victim: thy
soul is within it.”” The statue thus recalled to
life, still remained motionless; Horus pressed with
his fingers, or touched with ritual instruments,
the mouth, the eyes, the ears, and various parts of
the body, imitating the movements proper to each
organ, restoring to Osiris the use of his eyes to see
with, his ears to hear with, his mouth to eat and
talk with, his hands to work with, and his legs
to walk with. The formule necessary for the
performance of this imitative magic had been
preserved in books of ritual, entitled Books of the
Opening of the Mouth” (ap-ro).t This recall to
life was strengthened by embraces and magnetic
passes: the ‘‘fluid of life,’ transmitted from Horus
to Osiris, returned from the father to the son.

The life now restored to the new body of Osiris
must be preserved. Hence, a series of new scenes
—a third act—in the sacred drama. ‘The statue
was given into the hands of the dressers, and sub-
mitted toa very elaborate toilet,in which ablutions,

"A. Moret, In the Time of the Pharaohs, p. 197.

The Passion of Osiris 89

fumigations, incensing, anointing with paint, were
all operations having a magic significance. After-
wards, the statue was swathed in bandages,
adorned with necklaces, weapons, and crowns, and
everything was calculated—the texture and colour
of the fabrics, of the metals, or of the precious
stones—to produce the maximum of magical effect
against the enemy, Seth. Then the god was
placed before a table laden with “‘all things good
and pure that heaven gives, that earth creates,
that the Nile yields from her stores.” T he menu
as given included breads, meats, fruits, and various
drinks and removed for ever all fear of thirst or
hunger.

Finally, the statue, well-fed, was laid in a shrine,
the doors of which were sealed and bolted.*

Henceforward Osiris lived a new life, which he
was the first to know.

In this second existence, Osiris remained king
of the Two-Egypts, but his dwelling was in
heaven; he performed all the acts of his first life,
“but without growing old; he enjoyed an ideal
existence which was not to be ended by a second
death. The rites which had resuscitated Osiris had
made him immune against the attacks of Seth. °

*H. Junker, Die Stundenwechen 1. d. Osirismysterien, 1910.

NJ ee ae
econ

” 90 Kings and Gods of Egypt

Horus and likewise men, by rehearsing the Osirian
ceremonies every day assured to their benefactor
that continuance of second youth, which had not
been enjoyed either by RA, the demiurge, or by
his successors, Shou and Geb, who, without dying,
had been subject to senile decay. Death, as Osiris —

had known it, was henceforward desirable to gods

_and men; it opened to them the gates of a renewed

existence and led to immortali
Ast i
death saved men from finaleannihilation. In this

iris had been beneficent, so his

sense, the ‘‘passion” of Osiris became a “‘redemp-
tion” of gods and men.

As far back as the Ancient Empire, we see that
all the gods receive the rites of the Osirian cult.
The relatives and allies of Osiris, Horus, Isis, Thot,
Anubis; his ancestors, RA, Geb, Shou; the other
gods of earth and heaven,—accept a mortal fate
in order to baffle destruction by Seth and to enter
into a life of eternal splendour. The purpose of
the cult for them is to place them in the same
conditions in which Osiris had been. ‘The for-
mule of the holy service reveal to us that every
god adored in the temple is supposed to have been
killed, dismembered, bereft of his soul by Seth.
This explains why the religious texts allude to the
tombs of the gods, a statement supported by Greek

The Passion of Osiris gI

tradition: ‘‘The priests of Egypt say, not only of
Osiris, but in general of all the gods, that their
bodies rest among them, buried and honoured,
while their souls are shining stars in the sky.’’*

But the Greek author omits to say that the
rites of resurrection were repeated for the benefit
of the buried gods. Why should not the formule
which had proved so miraculously efficient for
Osiris exercise the same virtue when applied to the
other gods? The result was that any god assimi-
lated to the Good Being was also called an Osiris,
though he retained at the same time his own per-
sonality, attributes, and particular characteristics.

From the gods, redemption was then extended
to men: the cult of the dead rested on the same
identification with Osiris as the worship of the
gods. It was but ‘the representation of the divine
mystery which had formerly been accomplished
upon Osiris.”’? That_is why-every dead person
was called Osiris Such-and-such-a-one; the de-
ee to uve been asaembersd,
then restored; his son assumes, while celebrating
the cult of his parent, the name of Horus, and the
widow of the deceased, the name of Isis, In the
same way, the friends of the family play the parts

t De Iside et Osiride, oie
2G. Maspero, Etudes de Mythologie, i, p. 291.

92 Kings and Gods of Egypt

of Thot and Anubis. The king, who is the son
and heir of the gods, when he performs the worship

of the gods, is called Horus. Thus, the Bene)

Xe

Fic. 8.—Four Representations of the Tomb of Osiris.
(From E. Meyer, Zgypten sur Zeit der Pyramidenbauer.)

1.—Philae. The priest offers up a libation of water ‘‘ which renews the
life of Osiris.” Twenty-eight ears of corn grow on the divine body.

2.—Denderah. Tomb of Sokaris-Osiris, guarded by Isis and Nephthys.
A tree springs from the body of the god.

3.—Sarcophagus of Marseille. The mound (oudrit) where Osiris was
buried. Four trees shade it.

4.—How. Picture of a sarcophagus. The soul of Osiris, in the shape of
a bird, alights upon the tree growing from the tomb.

worship, celebrated... e_ king, the private
worship, celebrated by each individual for his

dead relatives, Sirian rites.
e féstiva Siris became the festival of all

Veen oe Bod Ci

The Passion of Osiris 93

the dead. At the festivals of Bubastis, all the
people took part in the mourning for Isis, and
“each one smote himself’? to show his grief.
At Sais, as is further stated by Herodotus, the
lamps were lighted in the evening when the
passion of Osiris was commemorated ; those lights,
throughout all Egypt, associated in this com-
memoration the ancestors of each house with the
ancestor of all, who had been the first to over-
come death.t These popular festivals may be
compared to the Mysteries of the Passion in
the Middle Ages or the sacred festivals still
to be seen at Oberammergau. In Egypt, as
with us, the cradle of dramatic poetry was the
temples. ”

Of each dead man and of each god who enjoys
new life through Osirian resurrection the texts
say that we shall see ‘his name bloom again’’
as blooms the sacred tree,4 or as the ears of corn
grow on the body of Osiris. In fact, grains of

t Herodotus, ii, 61-62, 170-171.

2A. Wiedemann, Die Anfdnge dramatischer Poesie im alten
Aegypten, 1905.

3 This is the title of numerous funeral papyri. An edition has
been issued by Lieblein: ‘‘ The book that my name may blossom.”’

4 The tomb of Osiris is generally shaded by trees, which prove
by their vitality the resurrection of the god. Cf. H. Schaefer,
Das Pers ses a aes Bambee (O11 Any ob, 38x

107). See Fig. 8.

a

94 Kings and Gods of Egypt

wheat or barley were often slipped in with the
corpse, so that their germination in the earth
might urge on the rebirth of the dead man. In
a tomb of the XVIIIth dynasty, the resurrection
was represented in this way:

‘*\ canvas is stretched above a rush mat upon a
framework of wood. In the middle of the canvas
an outline of Osiris has been traced in ink,’’ then
this enclosed portion has been covered with soil
and sand sown with barley-seed. After the grains
have germinated and have reached a height of
eight centimetres, the stalks have been clipped
“and a kind of green carpet in the shape of Osiris
has been obtained’’! (Plate XI).

Thus, then, gods and men, who during their
lives are as far apart as the heaven is from the
earth, become united after death by the Osirian
rites, by an assimilation with the Good Being
who played the part of a victim. We have seen
that at the beginning of the divine service, the
god or the man to whom worship is offered is
supposed to have been put to death and mutilated,
just as Osiris had been. This explains why in the
tombs of prehistoric Egypt, we find corpses dis-
membered, according to the Osirian rite. Now,

t Daressy, Fouilles dans la vallée des Rois, i, p. 26.

The Passion of Osiris 95

primitive people admit that like produces like; a
magician by mutilating a waxen image is able,
by the laws of magic, to wound and kill from afar
the original of the image. To repeat upon the
corpse of a man the mutilations formerly suffered
by Osiris, is to act directly upon the god himself;
to dismember a holy statue of Osiris is to dis-
member the god anew. As often as worship is
offered, that is, at every repetition of the Osirian
rite, there is inflicted upon the Good Being a
renewal of his suffering. At every bloody mystery
accomplished in any tomb or temple, on behalf
of a man or a god, Osiris again undergoes his
passion, death, and rebirth. He is sacrificed on
every altar.
_ How far is this sacrifice conscious and voluntary?
How far does Osiris offer up himself for the redemp-
tion of mankind? It does not seem probable that
in primitive times the divine victim offered himself
in sublime abnegation to be sacrificed; the oldest
conception is rather of a passive victim, overcame
by the force of magic rites. _But even as far back
as the time of the Pyramids, the texts indicate
progress in the moral attitude of Osiris.
ge ane
corpse of the god, the life of a sacrificed_animal

96 Kings and Gods of Egypt

animal sacred to Seth, so naturally the enemy’ of
Osiris. Here an interesting point arises. The bull,
the gazelle, the goose, once the priest has decapi-
tated and dismembered them, are in the same
state as that in which Osiris had been placed
by Seth, whence he had entered upon im-
mortality. Henceforward, and still by virtue of
imitative magic, the sacrificed victim loses its hos-
tile character. By the Osirian death, the victim
is sanctified and redeemed; its soul, freed from its
body after the mutilation, may soar to the world of
the Osirian gods. Seth and Osiris, the victim and
the god, are no longer to be distinguished one from
the other, but are joined in a common immortality.

These subtle speculations are found fully
developed in other religions; for instance, in the
Vedic rituals. They are obscurely set forth in
the Egyptian texts. The bull, supporter of Seth,
adversary of Osiris and sacrificed as such, becomes
the agent by which Osiris is conveyed to heaven.
He bears him on his back, or lends his hide where-
with to make a sail for the divine barge sailing
to Paradise. ih fact, the typhonian animal
becomes the Avie the liberator, ‘The father of
the dexd man or “or god: “Thy father is not among

«This is the ee meaning of our word host (from hostis,

enemy).

.

LL XS eled
“(aed Np sesnyjrl)

‘SISO Surynoidg v Jo WO oy} UT peyootnsey prod YL

AQ Enya pill

The Passion of Osiris f ° 97
ant

men; thy father is the great victim [the bull].”
Osiris even becomes confused with the bull:
“Thou art the_b i ahs

“Tf T understand rightly the meaning of facts
and texts which are difficult of interpretation,
we are now far away from the conception of
primitive times in which the part taken by Osiris
in the cult was somewhat automatic and passive.
Here, the Redeemer appears to extend to his
adversary the benefit of his sufferings; he draws
along with him into the way of salvation the
enemy from whom he can no longer be separated,
since Evil was the cause of Good. Without Seth,
the murderer, could men have known Osiris, the
Redeemer?

This interpretation provides the key to other
obscure passages of the Rituals. After the bloody
sacrifice, a supper is served to Osiris, or to the
divine or human beings, objects of the worship.
The liquid or solid offerings—bread, fruits, wines,
milk, and butter, which are presented to the god,
bear the mystical name of the “Eye of Horus.’’
This means they are the offspring of the son of
Osiris, his progeny, his flesh, for according to
Egyptian metaphysics the god brings forth into

« See the texts quoted by Lefébure, ap. A. Moret, Du sacrifice
en Egypte.

q

H
VW

98 Kings and Gods of Egypt

reality everything that he names and that he
sees. That which is offered to Osiris—or to the
Osirian gods who receive the same worship—is
his own body and blood, which the god divides
among the priests and relatives, under the appear-
ances of liquid and solid offerings. This holy food
partaken “of in common, this holy communion,
makes clergy and worshippers together partici-
pants in the blessings of his passidn and sacrifice.

The Holy Writings contain rather suggestive
passages on these points: ‘“‘Osiris knows the day
when he shall pass out.’’ Does not this fore-
boding imply that the god is resigned to his agony
and obedient unto Death? ‘The heart of Osiris

is im every sacrifice, . . .” which is no less

expressive of the voluntary, daily immolation of
the god.* “Thou art the father and the mother

of men; they live upon thy breath; they eat the

flesh of thy body? . . .”’ a forcible commentary on
one of the epithets of Osiris, “‘the great victim.”

t The Egyptians believed that man and all matter were emitted
from the divine eye of RA, 7.e., proceeded from Light. Nothing
existed in the Universe until the Creator RA saw beings and things
and named them. Cf. A Moret, In the Time of the Pharaohs, p. 243.

2Tavre des Morts, xvii. E. de Rougé, Etudes sur le rituel
funéraire, ap. Revue archéologique, June 1, 1860, p. 345; cf. Ed.
Naville, Das aegyptische Todtenbuch, Varianten, p. 65.

3Ostracon du Caire, pub. by Erman (Aegyptische Zeitschrift,
1900, pp. 30-33).

The Passion of Osiris 99

I have attempted to draw the line between what

is human and what is supernatural in the life and
~ death of Osiris; i ims to find a satisfactory

explanation of his fate. Whence arose the con-
ception of a sublime hero, a benefactor of men, who,
betrayed by his brother and his people, found in
——___—

death the peabee wherewith to overcome death,—
who, far frorkta ng revenge upon his executioners,
made them benefit by his sufferings and delivered
the world from the terror of the here 2

The Greeks found nothing absurd nor purely
fabulous at the root of the Egyptian myths;
“their myths can all be explained by moral or
practical reasons, or else they recall interest-
ing historical events or refer. to some natural
phenomena. ’’?

The author of the treatise De Iside et Osiride
enlightens us upon the interpretations of the
Osirian myth given by the Ancients. Some
thinkers would discover therein ‘‘the memory of
certain kings, to whom, as owing to their ex-
ceptional virtue and power, a divine origin was
attributed, and who afterwards fell into great mis-
fortunes.” Plutarch contemptuously dismisses
this explanation as impious, because it degrades
the gods to the rank of mortals; he also scoffs at

t De Iside et Osiride, 8,

100 Kings and Gods of Egypt

Evemerus of Messina, for whom the divine heroes
are but kings and chieftains who lived in olden
times. ‘When you hear all the fables that the |
jans relate concerning the gods, when you
_are told that they wandered upon earth, were cut

really happened.”* Modern criticism is less
absolute. We do-not admit with M. Amélineau
that the real tombs of Horus and of Seth, or the
shrine of Osiris, have been discovered in prehistoric
Abydos. Nevertheless, other scholars, like Pro-
fessor Frazer, working independently in other
domains, have traced in primitive kingship, or in
the customs of savage tribes of to-day, some of the
features that characterise the legend of Osiris.
Often enough, a primitive or savage king is treated,
living or dead, as an expiatory victim ;? his body,

———_
beheaded and dismembered, is scattered a

+ pon the land, in order to ensure magic protection,
_and fertility of the soil:

While rejecting the Evemeristic explanation of
legends, Plutarch admits that, in the case of Osi-
ris, it rested “‘upon true facts and real accidents’’ ;

1 De Iside et Osiride, 11.

2J. Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris, p. 277; Lectures on the Early
History of the Kingship, p. 253.

The Passion of Osiris IOI

but, he adds, ‘‘it is one of those dogmas which is
so wrapped about with fable and allegory that we
can only see faint traces of truth glimmering in
darkness.” The Egyptian priests, he further
states, made use of ‘‘enigmatic and mysterious
language and enveloped the dogmas in a veil of
allegory.”* What meanings then can we discover
beneath the myth of Osiris? Plutarch’s answers
are varied and sometimes contradictory.

He first tells us that among the Ancients “Osiris
personified the Nile, which unites itself with Isis,
the land; that Seth-Typhon is the sea in which the

Nile loses its by many branches; that the
Egyptian priests hold the sea in horror and call
Sophers among the priests add that Osiris is the
human principle, the source of all production, the
substance of all germinating things; that Seth-

oe

Typhon, on the contrary is the principle-of heat—

ES pe ana On eee
a € snares that Typhon spreads for Osiris
typify the terrible effects of drought when it
absorbs the moisture of the Nile . . .; the body
of Osiris, enclosed in a chest, means nothing more
nor less than the diminishing and the disappear-
ance of the waters of the Nile. Horus, in the end,

t De Iside et Ostride, 20, 9-10.

102 Kings and Gods of Egypt

triumphs over Seth; that is to say, that after the
rise of the Nile, the inundation" of its waters will
again replenish the earth.’ There seems to be
some truth in these explanations, M. Maspero has,
in fact, proved that Osiris was first worshipped in
the Delta, and especially at Busiris and Mendes. ?

Several Greek commentators added to this
physical symbolism an interpretation derived

from astronomy. ‘‘Typhon represents the solar
world; Osiri the awh i

nightly dews, t inci isture and fruit-
the growth of plants; the sun, on the contrary,
“burns up-the-earth-with its fire and withers it.”

In support of their arguments, a great number of
facts could be quoted, which meet with the con-
sideration of the modern critic. Osiris lived or
reigned twenty-eight years; this is about the length
(to be exact, twenty-nine and a half days) of the
monthly course of the moon. The death of Osiris

t De Iside et Osiride, 32-33, 39-40.

2 The aspect of the inundated plains of the Delta, of the river
which washes and fertilises them, of the desert sand that menaces
them, inspired the theologians of Mendes and Bouto with an
explanation of the mystery of the creation in which the gods of
these cities, Osiris, Seth, Isis, filled the chief parts. See G. Mas-
pero, Histoire, i, pp. 129-135. Cf. Ed. Meyer, ap. Aeg. Zeit-
schrift, xli, p. 97.

3 De Iside, 41. Cf. Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris, p. 359 et seq.

The Passion of Osiris 103

occurred on the se th day of the month,
e full moon beSins to wane; Seth

0 fourteen pieces (according

the day when
divided the bod
to the most ancient tradition); this is exactly
the number of days during which the moon de-

creases and finally disappears. At_the beginning—

“His soul,” Sai ext, “rejuvenates in the moon aS :
on its first day.” The festival calendars found

in the temples confirm Plutarch’s statements;

Osiris was worshipped especially on the second,

the sixth (first quarter), the fifteenth of the month

(full moon);* on this day of the expected, inevitable
catastrophe to which Osiris must succumb, there

2 serificed, as if to retard the “ great affliction, Mf

a black pig, ghe of Seth’s animals that swallowed

Fe lunar disc. During the last days of the month,
from the 17th or 20th Athyr, according to some,
from the 16th to the 30th Choiak, according to
others,” the death and resurrection of Osiris were
celebrated. At the time when the corpse of the
god was supposed to have been recovered from

1 A. Moret, Rituel du culte divin, p. 97-

2 The festivals were celebrated in the month of Choiak during
the Ptolemaic period; in the month of Athyr, according to Plu-
tarch, at the end of the first century of the Christian era. See,
on this subject, J. Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris, p. 325 et seg. ‘The
19th Athyr would correspond to the 15th of N ovember.

104 Kings and Gods of Egypt

the Nile, the priests moulded a little image in

the form of a new moon.*
Whether_Osiris was the beneficent Nile or the
- — pecialeing moon does not yet explain how his death
became became for-men "the bread of life’’ and secured
them immortality. So Plutarch was not at fault
when he said: ‘“‘Each of these explanations in
Za particular is false, but taken together they are
true,’’ in the sense that they each show one
(i? side of the problem. But Plutarch goes on to
| relieve his mind of another. hypothesis to which
he gives no credit: “They say that Osiris is

buried when the seed is sown in the ground, that

he re e plants begin

: Sproute

~~ This explanation seems absurd to the author of
De Iside et Osiride; it is nevertheless the one that
I the most readily admit. Agricultural peoples,
in a primitive state of society, attribute to spirits

the changes of the seasons, the periodical fertility ©
of the earth, as w s the annual deat

tion. The fields, they say, are pecpled with
spirits who sleep in winter, awa Gy

De Iside et Osiride, 39.

De Iside et Osiride, 65: Kal déyovres Odrrecbar pev ” Ooupry bre
kpUmTeTaL TH Yq omerpouevos 6 Kaprés, adds J dvaBioteba: kal dvadaly-

ecba bre BNatTHTEwWs dpx%. See also the other texts quoted by
Frazer, op. laud., p. 339, n. 3.

)

The Passion of Osiris 105

become manifest in the crops. These spirits,
keeping guard over the earth and its fruits protect
them even from men themselves. When men
approach to gather the harvest or reap the vintage,
the most expeditious method of overcoming the
spirit is to sacrifice him before the reaping. But
as it is desirable to keep him in the place that he
renders fruitful, the spirit of the wheat is again °
buried in the same soil of which he was the guard-
ian. Usually, labourers break a statue or an image
into pieces, strew over the fields the fragments,
which are supposed thus to assist the process of
germination.’ In the following springtime, the
god returns to life with the vegetation; every year,
he thus takes upon himself again the office of guard-
ian and undergoes his sacrifice anew.

Professor Frazer recognises in thd
all the characteristics of_a worship
vegetation.? Osiris would be one of those agrarian
“deities, who, every year, at harvest-time, are cut
in pieces by the edge of the sickle or by the blows
of-the flail; who are buried with the seeds, and who
shoots. Professor Frazer supports ably his

en
For the worship of the Spirits of the corn, and for agrarian
sacrifices, cf. Hubert and Mauss, Essai sur le sacrifice, p. 186.
2 Adonis Attis Osiris, p. 330 et seq.

106 Kings and Gods of Egypt

argument by the use of the details of the life of
Osiris given above. Born of the sky and the earth,

as the fruitful ee is of the rain im the-pretad,
OSaa ISAITS Ta eesoutces of aero
Osiris reveals to man the resources of agriculture;
put to death in full maturity, his dismembered

body fertilises fourteen provinces of Egypt to be
_ born again under the form of a tree or an ear of
“corn. I find @ confirmation of this hypothesis-in
several facts. In a popular story, Isis is called
‘the soul of bread” (Bataou) ; this peculiar epithet
no doubt signifies a Spirit of the corn. Further,
Diodorus tells us that at the moment of the harvest
the Egyptian peasants wailed and besought Isis,
while they cut the first sheaf;' Isis, they imagined,
was mourning her husband, who died with the
dying ears of corn; and one of her tears, fallen
from the sky, made the Nile overflow and brought
about the annual inundation. Some months
later, at seedtime, the peasants buried the grain
with the same rites as those observed at the burial
of the dead. 3 To bury the seed was indeed to bury

Setar eT EE
Osiris, the soul of the seeds; at springtime, the

wera.

2 According to Pausanias (in Phocicis, x, 32). The Copts
have retained the Egyptian tradition and still celebrate, to-day,
on ther7th of June, the Feast of the Fall of the Drop, which leav-
ing thesky brings about the inundation (J. Lieblein, ap. Recueil
de travaux, Xxii, p. 71).

3 De Iside et Osiride, 70.

The Passion of Osiris 107

new verdure gave evidence of the resurrection of
the god.

As for the affinities of Osiris with the lunar god,
they are in keeping with this view. Itisa popular
belief that the moon, to which is attributed the

ightly dews, has a great influence on plant
growth. ‘‘Eyerything grows with the growin
moon,” was éd by Pliny the Naturalist.*
*—The-thanges in the life of the lunar Osiris corre-
spond roughly, at any rate in the popular mind,
to the alternating periods of growth and decay
in the world of plants.

No doubt, the figure of Osiris is too complex
for any interpretation to explain at one and the
same time its diverse aspects. Nevertheless the
theory that Osiris ; was, at least in the origin,an——
agrarian god, seems to me_most in conformit
with the spirit of the legend and the letter of the
texts. If even to-day the magnificent spectacle
of the death and the rebirth of the fields stirs our
poetical feeling, how much more must it have im-
pressed the fresher imaginations of our ancestors?
Can we wonder that the Egyptians have incar-
nated in a god the annual ‘‘great affliction,” and
that to this god of corn and wine, who feeds men

« Natural History, ii 221. Cf. Frazer, op. laud., p. 359 et seq.

108 Kings and Gods of Egypt

with his body and blood, they have attributed the
romance of a Hero and the character of a Bene-
factor? Osiris, in submitting himself to death,
mutilation, and burial in the earth, offered himself
up for the salvation of all and became a Redeemer.
Resigned and confident, he revealed to mankind
the way toa holy death. ‘Be thou faithful unto
death,’’ the Bible tells us, ‘‘and I will give thee
a crown of Life.” And St. Paul insists: “The
body is sown in corruption ... it is raised in
glory.”

It is this analogy between human destiny and
vicissitudes of nature, it is the untiring hope in a
springtime which shall endure for ever, that we
find at the base of Egyptian thought, under the
form—gradually refined to the sublime—of Osiris
the Saviour.

CHAPTER IV

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SouL AND MORAL
RETRIBUTION THROUGH THE AGES

WitH modern people, who have attained a
certain degree of culture, the idea of the immortal-__
ity of the soul is closely associated with some hope
of reward for a righteous life and some fear_of
punishment for a sinful one. If there be an
existence beyond the tomb, it should be one that
makes atonement for the injustices and partiali-
ties men have experienced in this earthly life;
it should at the same time favour those who have
lived in obedience to the dictates of their con-
science. Reciprocally, the hope that there will
be, after death, some retribution for the good
and evil men have done on earth becomes a strong
motive for belief in a future life. The immortality
of the soul is one of the postulates of the idea of
conscience and retribution.

Philosophers have long wondered concerning
the origin of these ideas and whether they have

109

110 Kings and Gods of Egypt

always been in association. From the researches
made into the beliefs of the peoples of classical
antiquity, also of the savage tribes of our own day,*
it has been discovered that the notion of immor-
tality is not necessarily connected with that of
retribution, nor does it appear at the same time,
and the adaptation of each to the other is rather
the outcome of an already advanced civilisation.

Let us make a brief inquiry of Ancient Egypt.
Her monuments will allow us to go back six
thousand years or more, and yield us evidence,
on one side or the other, for a period covering at
least four thousand years. We already know that
Ancient Egypt offers particular interest in connec-
tion with this subject, because the idea of a judg-
ment flourished there very early, and seems to
have been closely connected with a traditional
idea of immortality and retribution.

In order to fully understand what particular
conception the Egyptians formed of immortality
we must first know what they meant by the words,
life, death, the soul.
~~ Life, as the Egyptians imagined it, was a thing
somewhat difficult to define. We moderns explain

*L. Marillier, La Survivance de Padme et lidée de Justice chez
les peuples, non civilisés (Annuaire de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes,
section des Sciences religieuses, 1894).

Immortality and Retribution 111

it as a vibration. For them, it was a breath," Se xl

or a fluid,” that could-be-transmitted either by
sending it forth into the nostrils, or by the execu-
tion of certain magnetic passes. Daily experience
showed that this breath, or motion-producing
fluid, suddenly disappeared from individuals
fallen into the particular condition called death.

This condition is characterised by the loss of
consciousness, the absence of breath and movement,
by the decay of the flesh and the annihilation of
the body. On the other hand, this loss of con-
sciousness, movement, and even of breath may
occur frequently and temporarily in such states
as sleep, a faint, or an hypnotic trance; after a
variable lapse of time, the man ‘‘comes back to
himself” and goes on living as before. The only
serious accident of death is the decay of the body.
If this can be avoided, there is no room for doubt

1“They live by breaths” in the other world (Todtenbuch,
XxXxvViii, titre, xli, 2). The function of Thot, god of the wind,
of the breath of life, of the Ivedya, has efined by Ed.
Naville (Zeitschrift, 1877, Pp. 24). “To give the breaths” is to
give life (cf. A. Moret, Rituel du culte divin, pp. 140-142). To
ore a mummy, a sail was brought to his nose, to recall the

breath of wi F ne oO e-

“Fitual books which assures the resurrection of the dead is called
Book of Respirations (Shai n sinsin); it has been edited and
translated by J. de Horrack.

2 Cf, A. Moret, Du caractére religieux de la royauté pharaonique,

p. 45.

ae

112 Kings and Gods of Egypt

that breath and motion will eventually return to
the dead man as they do to him who has fallen
asleep or into a faint.

i The Egyptians therefore explained death as an
one understood how to exercise the arts and powers
of magic, it would become possible to galvanise the
bodies of people fallen into such a deplorable state
to rescue them from a too protracted and danger-
ous interruption of life. The essential requirement
was to prevent decay, hence arose the invention of
various practices, of which the best known are

2 Tin ncalicn Seo eee
“Opening of the Mouth.”’* which were supposed
to restore to the body the power of movement and
the use of all its organs. The body, being thus
placed in such a condition that it can be awakened
at any moment, and recalled to life, is deposited-
for all time in a safe tomb. Unless some accident
deteriorates the body, the life in it will never be
extinguished.

There is, in fact, in the body of men, beings,
and things, a permanent indestructible element,
which shall survive for eternity, provided that the
body, human, animal, vegetal, preserves its frame
and organs uncorrupted. We should call this

"A. Moret, Rituel du culte divin, pp. 52, 203-208.

©

Immortality and Retribution 113

permanent element a “corporeal soul.”” The

Egyptians gave it the name of Ka WU, that is, A be
“genius.” Egyptologists designate it by a peri- ark
‘phrasis: the Double. The Double is, as it were, a we

second copy of beings in their outward appearance; _ re)
it has for men the form of the human body butitis
invisiblé to human eyes. In order that it may
materialise itself, it must be offered a base or
support, either the living body, or the uncorrupted
corpse, or even a likeness—such as a Statue, bas-
relief, or painted portrait of the living person. So,
in spite of every appearance of death in the
individual, a_mummy, or portrait, provided it
possess verisimilitude, is expected to attract to it
the Double, just as the living body did, by virtue
of the fundamental principle in magic that like
attracts like.

The Double seems to have been with the Egyp-
tians their most_ancient_and_popular-eenception
of the soul. To it may be traced that first belief
“in-immortality which led them to build at all
times of their history those innumerable tombs
which provided for the deceased a domicile in
which the Double might enjoy eternal life. Such

1 The theory of the Double has been explained by G. Maspero
(Etudes de mythologie et d’archéologie, i, p. 6), who has revived
a term—rather inadequate—employed by Nestor Lhéte. (Cf.
Sphinx, i, p. 67.)

&

114 Kings and Gods of Egypt

a life is purely human and material. The man
who outlives himself by his Double shall in the
next world lead an existence very similar to the
one he led on earth. Only, as seems natural, his
life as a Double is perpetuated at the most desir-
able moment of his earthly existence. If he were
an official, he was represented and immortalised
at the height of his career, covered with glory and
honour; if he were just a plain, average man, a
good husband and father, his existence as a Double
would afford him, eternally, all the comforts, joys,
delights of an idealised home and family life. In
brief, in accordance with this material conception
of the soul and human idea of a future life, Paradise

is little more than a well-appointed tomb, ae

——nennencn

summer, warm in winter, ecorated

~ well store

ed with friends, women, and flowers.

This conception lasted throughout the whole of
the Egyptian civilisation and the people continued
down to the Roman conquest to build for the
Double these tombs, which afford us such curious
realistic details about its material life after death.
But, unfortunately for the believers in this matter-
of-fact and comfortable future, a new ideal was
evolving. There had been in Egypt, from the

earliest known times, men who were not satisfied

Immortality and Retribution 115

with this common-place destiny, this Paradise
which was little more than a very desirable earth.
Parallel with the belief that confines the Double
to the earth, there arises a longing for the soul to
leave the tomb. Out of this feeling grew another
conception, probably of later date, which little
by little encroached upon the primitive notion of
the Ka, without succeeding, at any time, in
completely supplanting it. It is the idea of a
spiritual soul and of a Paradise, which in certain
ways differs completely from the earthly life.

Side by side with the corporeal soul, the Egyp-
tians imagined a-soul-spirit, the Ba. They gave
to it the shape of a bird \ with a human head
for it is a Supernatural being, unlimited by the
ordinary conditions of mankind; its intelligent
head symbolises the thought that resides in the
human body, while its wings are means to carry
it far away from this material world. As the
birds live in the sky, so the bird-soul seeks its
paradise in heaven.

We do not know how the idea of a spiritual soul
arose among the Egyptians. It is probable that
the material life of the Double on earth seemed an
unattractive and inadequate hope to the more
refined and intelligent minds, nor did it suffice
to overcome the fear of death. It is in the royal

116 Kings and Gods of Egypt

pyramids of the Vth dynasty that this doctrine
of a bird-soul soaring to heaven first appears.
Among primitive peoples, however, the great of
this world carry their rank into the life beyond: the
king remains a king, the nobleman, a nobleman;
the slave, a slave. It seems probable that the
Pharaohs imagined a higher life beyond the tomb,
first for their royal persons alone. Later, by their
royal favour, their favourites and, finally, all their
subjects, were admitted to that future bliss.’ At
any rate, under the Ancient Empire, the common
folk are satisfied with a material Paradise, where
the gods have hardly a place, receive no prayers,
and are only named that they may restore to men
a portion of the offerings? they have received from
them; onthe other hand, the Pharaohs reserve for
themselves a more exalted abode. Their bodies
remain on earth in the Pyramids, but their souls,
knowing well all the sure ways that lead to Paradise,
edge themselves in among the gods. Some climb
thither by a ladder set up in a corner of the horizon;
some sail there in a barge wherein a suspicious
Charon plies the oars; some take a flight to the
«A. Moret, Du caractére religieux de la royauté pharaonique,
pp. 200-202.
2 In the funeral formule of the Ancient Empire, itissaid that “th

king gives the offering” to sucha god ‘‘in order that he may give it”’
— atleast part of it—to such men as are favoured by the Pharaoh.

Immortality and Retribution 117

heavens, soaring upwards or settling on the out-
spread wings of Thot, the sacred Ibis.

In heaven, the soul finds three abodes; the Fields
of Ialou, a happy land where crops, seven cubits in
height, reward the labours of the deceased; the
Fields of Offerings, where the green meadows are
spread with bread, beer and fruit, which the blessed
may enjoy, without the labour of producing them;
the Solar Barge which leads the deceased to Douazt
into the very pr

¥ were the diverse destinies which awaited

the spiritual soul; they do not differ essentially

from those offered to the corporeal soul, the Double.

Each celestial paradise still savours strongly

of the earth. The Be rooem meee \ | :
_of Egyptian cowatey-transported into heaven, an

Chen

the comfort enjoyed there is the comfort enjoyed
by the Double in the tomb, save for the proximity
Fields of Offerings take us a step further into the
fantastical. Here the deceased is no longer obliged
to till the soil and labour for his bread. The table
eae to cally abroad yathout tion cee pane
“finds himself transported into a land of miracles.
Inthe paradise of Dowalt, reached by the Solar
Barge we enter into a region of marvels. This is a

t See A. Moret, In the Time of the Pharaohs, pp. 204-205.

118 Kings and Gods of Egypt

place of mysterious terrors as well as of celestial
blisses. As the soul leaves the solid ground of the
earthly paradise, it wanders farther and farther
into the unknown, the uncertain, the strange, the
inexplicable. In its anxious quest of its destiny
beyond the tomb, the soul leads us by degrees into
a new world where bliss is mingled with anxiety.

Therefore, we are not surprised when we find
that as far back as this time the aspirations for
immortality are tinged with scepticism. As early
as the XIth dynasty there was chanted on the
day of the funeral, a dirge that to us sounds
pessimistic. ‘Tears cannot bring back to life the
heart of him who goes down to the tomb. There-
fore makeryens holidasewiilserernre on the earth
and be ye not weary of the holiday. It is not
granted to any to take his goods into the other
world and there is none who went there who has
returned hither.’’ Did the yearning for a paradise,
farther and farther away, more mysterious, hence
less certain, make men fear whether they would
ever attain it and enjoy any paradise at all? Be
that as it may, the more we advance in Egyptian
history, the stronger grows the spirit of scepticism.*

« See The Songs of the Harpist engraved in the Theban tombs of
the New Empire and reproduced in In the Time of the Pharaohs,
pp. 264-265.

Immortality and Retribution 119

The faith in immortality, so firmly rooted in the
minds of the early Egyptians, begins to waver as
soon as man tries to reason and therefore to doubt.

Along with reason, another anxiety arose, a
moral qualm as to what will befall man in the other
world; what, there, awaits his good or evil deeds.
This idea of retribution is expressed in a popular
tradition, narrated by Diodorus’ when writing
concerning the judgment of the dead in Egypt.

Moreover, the friends and nearest relations of the
dead acquaint the judges and the rest of their friends
with the time prefixed for the funeral of such an one by
name, declaring that such a day he is to pass the Lake.
At which time forty-two judges appear and sit together
in a semicircle, in a place beyond the Lake, where a
ship provided beforehand by those who have charge
of the matter and directed by a pilot whom the
Egyptians call Charon is hauled up to the shore.?...
The ship, being now in the Lake, every one is at liberty
by the law to accuse the dead before the coffin be put
aboard; and if any accuser appear and make good his
accusation, that he lived an ill life, then the judges
give sentence, and the body is debarred from being
buried after the usual manner; but if the informer be

« Diodorus, i,7. Trans.:G. Booth.

2 According to the Egyptian texts, the divine ferryman was
called Mahaf; but the word garo means boat in Egyptian. Con-
cerning the character of the boat which conveyed the dead to
heaven or to the tomb, cf. Lefébure, La Barque, ap. Sphinx vii,
p. 185 et seq.

120 ~—= Kings and Gods of Egypt

convicted of a scandalous and malicious accusation, he
is very severely punished. If no informer appear, or
if the information prove false, all the kindred of the
deceased leave off mourning and begin to set forth his
praises. .. . The common people take up the strain
and approve of all that is said in his praise with a loud
shout, and set forth likewise his virtues with the
highest praises and strains of commendation as he
that is to live for ever in the kingdom of the other
world.

In reality, this tribunal of justice was supposed
by the Egyptians, to sit, not on earth but in the
other world, and the living had no part in the
judgment. In the realm of the dead, there was
said to be a Hall of the Double Justice, where the
deceased was tried before a jury consisting of
forty-two divinities and one supreme judge,
Osiris.‘ The attention of all was concentrated
upon a divine balance by which stood the god
Thot, superintending the weighing. In one scale
lay the heart of the deceased, that is, his conscience
heavy with sin or light. In the other scale was
truth, symbolised by a statuette of the goddess
Mait, or by a feather b a hieroglyphic of the
goddess. When the weight of the heart equalled
the weight of the truth, then the account given
by the deceased of his conduct on earth was held

t In the Time of the Pharaohs, p. 234 et seq.

Immortality and Retribution 121

to be proved true. Thot and Osiris verified with
a plumb line the accuracy of the balance, and if
it was satisfactory, admitted the deceased to
Paradise. Ina case to the contrary the deceased
was sentenced to infernal tortures. Such, in
broad outline, is the judgment of the dead. I
have shown elsewhere" how the tribunal of Osiris,
at its inception influenced by bribery, threats, and
trickery, developed an increasing sense of impar-
tiality and integrity. In its highest form, it
shows us divine justice, no longer satisfied with
merely inquiring into the deeds of the deceased,
but careful to secure for those who have suffered
unjustly from men or fate during their life on
earth, a reward proportionate to their deserts
and to their sufferings.

Through the whole course of its evolution, the
judgment of the dead in Egypt retains three
important features: first, a tribunal, consisting of a
supreme judge, Osiris, god of the Nether World;
assisted by the FOIE of Truth (the double
Mait), certain psychopomps (leaders of the soul)
such as Anubis, Thot, and forty-two assessors,
who perform the office of an examining jury;
second, a balance with two scales; third, an execu-
tioner, who, under the form of a hybrid monster,

1 In the Time of the Pharaohs, p. 241 et seq.

122 Kings and Gods of Egypt

watches the weighing, ready to devour the soul that
is found wanting. This method of judgment by
weighing the souls—or psychostasy—can be traced
back to at least 2000 B.C.*

The idea that divine justice can become mate-
rialised in a balance and human deeds be estimated
by their weight is common to other nations of
antiquity. Psychostasy of the same kind appears
in their religious texts upon their monuments, and
it has kept a prominent place in the Christian
iconography down to the Middle Ages. Let us see,
then, how the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Hindoos,
Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans embodied
this idea of which we have found so clear an
expression in Egypt.

In Greece, the weighing of the deeds of men
occurs in the Homeric Poems. _ In the J/zad,.when

Zeus desired to decide upon fheiscde ore:

between two armies or two warriors,

a a alert ng SS Se me ps ae
then did the Father balance his golden scales, and
put therein two fates of death (xfee) that bringeth
long woe, one for horse-taming Trojans, one for mail-
clad Achaians; and he took the scale-yard by the

« The principle of the Judgment of the Dead by the Balance
was admitted from the time of the Pyramids of the VIth dynasty
(see In the Time of the Pharaohs, p. 214); but representations of the
Judgment are not known before the time of the New Empire,
about 1600 B.c. ;

Immortality and Retribution 123

midst and lifted it, and the Achaians’ day of destiny
sank. So lay the Achaians’ fates on the bounteous
earth, and the Trojans’ fates were lifted up towards
wide heaven.’

The same operation is described, in the same
terms, at the moment_wh d_Hector
meet in single combat.2 These passages have
been imitated literally by Virgil in the descrip-
tion of the struggle between Aineas and Turnus:

Jupiter himself holds forth two scales with balance
poised, and in them puts the opposite fortunes (fata)
of the two, to discover which of them the sinking scale
is to doom, with the weight of which death is to incline.’

As De Witte, who first compared these texts, has
well put it,4

in Homer, there is nothing to suggest that psychostasy
is concerned with a future life and the rewards and
punishments which await man there.... It is
only the question of the issue of acontest.... The
weighing of the fates or souls has no other aim than
the decision of an earthly and material conflict. It is
the lightest weight that indicates the victor.

The Homeric psychostasy in the Iliad has
nothing to do with divine justice; it is a weighing

t Tliad., viii. Trans.: Lang, Leaf, and Myers, p. 145.

bid Da dAO. Sao 3 Aneid, xii, 725-727-

4De Witte, Scénes de la Psychostasie homérique, ap. Revue
archéologique, January 15, 1845, p. 647.

124 Kings and Gods of Egypt

of destinies. We learn from Plutarch that at a
very early date, as far back as the time of A’schylus,
the weighing of the destinies of Achilles and Hector
went by the name of duyoctactz, “ psychostasy ’’—
the weighing of souls.’ This scene is frequently
represented on painted vases where the fates or
souls assume the form of little fighting warriors or of
little naked winged genii.? Here, fate has already
taken an individual character; in estimating its
weight the moral value of the individual must
henceforth be taken into account.
In fact, we learn from the Odyssey that the idea
_was already familiar to the Greeks. It is said of
Minos, the ancient King of Crete, that he ruled
in the Infernal Regions and that, assisted by his
brothers AZacus and Rhadamanthus, he presided
over this tribunal. ‘There then I saw Minos,

* De Witte, loc. cit., p.653. Aischylus, by what Plutarch says,
founded upon this episode in the legend of Hector and Achilles,
a tragedy, entitled Psychostasia.

2See an Etruscan mirror, in the Recherches sur la Psychostaste
(ap. Revue archéologique, August 15, 1844, p. 297), published by
Maury. The Stadtholders’ Vase and the Vase from the Luynes
collection (ap. De Witte, loc. cit., pp. 650 and 652).

3 Odyssey, iv, 564. The Greek name Rhadamanthus calls up
the memory of the Egyptian word Amenti, ‘‘the west, the other
world,” and of the epithet “chief of the Amenti,” which is that

- of the Egyptian funeral gods. Cf. V. Bérard, Les Phéniciens et
l Odyssée, ii, p. 69. *

Immortality and Retribution 125

glorious son of Zeus, wielding a golden sceptre,
giving sentence from his throne to the dead, while
they sat and stood around the prince, asking his
dooms through the wide-gated house of Hades.”’*
This r 1 ly to a tribunal of the dea

but_there is not the least suggestion that judgment
is being passed upon deeds performed by the dea

while they were alive upon the earth. It is just

possible that Minos, ZEacus, and Rhadamanthus
simply continue to exercise in Hades the office of

- . judge which is an essential prerogative of primitive

kingship.? The cases brought before them may be
conflicts that have arisen in the Nether World,
for there ‘‘is strife among men” in Hades as well as
on earth. Nowhere in the Odyssey do we find,
clearly expressed, the idea that men shall have to
account for their earthly deeds before the tribunal
of Minos.

The first mention of it in Greek literature is in
Pindar, at the beginning of the fifth century. In
the second Olympic, the poet says, “‘The great of
the-Barth shall find a judge in Hades, for they —
atone by sufferings (mows éxrowy) ; those who on

t Odyssey, Xi, 567-570.

2For all the classical texts and their commentaries, I refer,
henceforward, to the excellent monograph of Ruhl, De mortuorum
judicio, Giessen, 1903.

126 Kings and Gods of Egypt

Earth have committed evil deeds are judged by
the goddess Ananke.’’* OW

This statement marks'a great advance in the
idea of justice; the tribunal in Hades prosecutes
for sins committed on earth, but what system of
procedure was followed by Ananke or the divine
tribunal, we do not learn. It is from Plato that
we derive further information.

In the Apology of Socrates, the poet-philosopher
sets over against human tribunals, or rather
“those who pretend to be judges . . . those who
are true judges, and who are said to judge
in the infernal regions, Minos, Rhadamanthus,
fEacus, and Triptolemus, and such other of the
demi-gods as were righteous during their own
life.’” Wesee at once that such a court constitutes
itself the guardian of virtue and will therefore

demand that men should justify their earthly

actions. In the Gorgias, Plato develops this idea

very elaborately:

This law respecting men was in existence in the time
of Saturn, and always was and still is, established

* Olymbic, ii, 56 et seq.

Tad ev Tad Ads apxg
adirpa Kata yas Sixd ger Tis éx Opa
Nbyor ppdcaio’ ’ Avd-yKa

Cf. Ruhl, p. 34 et seq.

Immortality and Retribution ‘127

among the gods, that a man who has passed through life
justly and piously should when he dies go to the
Islands of the Blessed, and dwell in all perfect happiness
free from evil, but that he who has lived unjustly and
impiously should go to a prison of punishment and
justice, which they call Tartarus.

During the reign of Saturn, and even recently
when Jupiter held the government, there were
living judges of the living, who passed sentence on
the very day on which any one was about to die.
In consequence of this, sentences were badly
awarded. Pluto, therefore, and the guardians of
the Blessed Isles, went to Jupiter and informed
him that men came to them who did not deserve
either sentence.

Jupiter, therefore, said, I will prevent this in future.
For now sentences are badly awarded, because those
that are judged are judged clothed, for they are judged
while living. Many, therefore, he continued, whose
souls are depraved are invested with beautiful bodies,
nobility of birth, and riches, and when the judgment
takes place, many witnesses come in their behalf, to
testify that they have lived justly. Hence the judges
are awed by these things, and moreover, they too pass
sentence when clothed, for their minds are veiled with
eyes and ears, and the whole body... . Therefore

they must be judged divested of all these things ;
for they must be judged after they are dead; the judge
too must be naked and dead . . . destitute of all his

YAS

128 Kings and Gods of Egypt

kindred, and leaving all that ornament on the earth
in order that the judgment may be just.

“Now I had observed these things . . . and accord-
ingly have appointed my sons as judges, two from
Asia, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and one from Europe,
FBacus. These, then, when they are dead, shall

judge in the meadow, at the three roads, of which two
lead, one to the Isles of the Blessed, the other to Tar-

tarus. And Rhadamanthus shall judge those from
“Asia, and AZacus those from Europe. But to Minos
I will give the prerogative of deciding in case any
doubt occurs to the two others. ...
«|, When, therefore, they come to the judge
... Rhadamanthus, having made them stand
before him, examines the soul of each, not knowing
whose it is. ...” If this soul is filled with disorder
and baseness, having lived far from the truth, Rhada-
manthus ‘‘sends it ignominiously to prison, where on
its arrival it will undergo the punishment it deserves.”
Those who can expiate their offences, do so by suffer-
ings. But those who have committed the greatest
sins areincurable. Punishment is useless to them, but
it serves as an example to others. Rhadamanthus
“sends them to Tartarus, signifying at the same time ©
whether they appear to be curable or incurable,
but arriving thither, they suffer according to their
deserts.
Sometimes, Rhadamanthus beholding another soul
that has passed through life piously and with truth,
is delighted, and sends it to the Isles of the
Blessed.’’* A®acus, too, does the same and, like Minos,
he gives his verdict with a whip in his hand.

tGorgias. Trans.: Cary, p. 228 et seq.

Immortality and Retribution 129

By the fourth century B.c., the divine tribunal
elaborate organisation. The

judges are the aditional kings who date
back to Homeric times; but instead of discharging
the duties of their office as a kingly prerogative
divorced from ethics, they endeavour to appreciate
at their just value the vices and virtues of
humanity and to assign to men different abodes
according to their works. The truly righteous
enjoy the Islands of the Blessed; the unrepentant
wicked endure torments in Tartarus; while the
neutrals serve a term of probation in a kind of
purgatory, in order to atone for their misdeeds.

It is to be remarked that Pindar and Plato, who
formulated—the former in a few words, the latter
in many pages—the theory of a judgment in the
other world, probably derived their inspiration
from the Orphic and the Pythagorean doctrines.*

On the other hand, the tragic poets and orators
make but brief allusions to the subject of judgment,
nor is the store of funeral inscriptions that have
come down to us of any use; far from supplying
any information on how the common folk imagined
judgment, they leave the point untouched. Are

« This point was made clear by A. Dietrich and after him by
L. Ruhl from fragments of Orphic writings and scenes on painted
vases. L. Ruhl, De mortuorum judicio, p. 46 et seq.

9

130 Kings and Gods of Egypt

we to infer from this silence that the theory of a
judgment of the dead never went beyond the
limits of philosophical and poetical speculation?*

Little wonder, then, if the matter-of-fact, and
practical-minded Stoics and Epicureans dismissed
the fable of judgment with a contempt, imitated
later by certain Latin writers, notably Cicero and
Seneca.2 The Latin poets, however, mention
the infernal judges—Horace in his Odes,* then
Ovid,‘ and especially Virgil. The sixth book of the
ZEneid reveals how the Latin mind, during the first
century of our era, imitated and developed the
theme.

When AEneas descends into Hades, he notices
that the dead are sent either to Tartarus or to the
Elysian Fields. ‘‘And these abodes are by no
means assigned without allotment, without a
judge; Minos rules the scrutiny and shakes the
urn, he convokes the silent dead and learns their
lives and the charges brought against them.’’s
The poet further describes his wanderings in the
Nether World; the way dividesinto_two-—paths,
the right -leads to Elysium,—but, by the left, the

tL. Ruhl, De mortuorum judicio, pp. 67-74.

2 Ibid., pp. 54,75
Clie peeve ere

4 XIII, 25. 5 Aneid, vi; 426 et seq.

£

Immortality and Retribution 131

dead arrive at Tartarus where they receive their
punishment. Here Rhadamanthus is lord and
rules with stern severity.’

The other poets, from Propertius to Seneca and
from Statius to Claudianus, take up the topic
treated by Virgil, impressing upon it a strongly
Latin character. With them, the tribunal of the
dead takes on the semblance of a Roman tribunal
as already pointed out by Servius in his commen-
tary upon the 4ineid; Minos is a Roman questor,
who draws lots to determine in what order the
cases shall be examined; Rhadamanthus strikes the
criminals with his sceptre, while the Furies lash
with their whips those who will not confess their
crimes. Vivid and impressive as is this descrip-
tion, it remains none the less a purely literary
exercise. The unlearned knew little about the
judgment of the dead, and the cultivated few
made a jest of it as a poetical invention.

This is evidenced by the presentment of divine
justice in the famous Dialogues of the Dead by
Lucian of Samosata about 170 A.D. A certain
highwayman, Sostrates, is sentenced by Minos to
everlasting torments. But he disputes the verdict,
questions the authority of the judges, arguing,
upon the assumption that all the events of his

t Aneid, vi, 566 et seq.

132 Kings and Gods of Egypt

and therefore he cannot be held responsible for his
doings. Minos, overcome by the truth of the
logical deduction, releases the culprit, but with
these warning words: “Mind that thou dost not
teach the dead to argue as thou hast done.”
In the form of a jest, this criticism dismisses the
belief in a judgment of human actions among men
who submit_their_lives to Ananke and Fatum.
The paradoxical result is that in the last centuries
of the Greco-Roman civilisation, the sceptical
dilettanti speak, without any faith in it, of a
judgment of the dead, and in the very terms used
in times long past by the Homeric bards; both
subordinating divine equity to inevitable fate.

If we now turn to the Eastern civilisations, we
find that the tradition of a judgment of the dead is
presented in a different way in the Avesta, the
Vedas, and in some of the Buddhic hymns.

The Avesta, the holy book of Persia, is not
known in its original form; the texts we possess
were collected in the third century A.D., under the
dynasty of the Sassanides. They afford us an
entirely new conception of the judgment.

After man has gone, is dead, the impious and male-
volent spirits begin their attacks. After the third

Immortality and Retribution 133

night, at dawn, when day is breaking, Mithra, well-
armed, comes to the mountain and the sun rises.
Then the demon ... carries away in chains the
sinful souls of wicked mortals. The soul follows the

road built by Time, a road built forthe wicked as well
AS torttetighteous, the bridge Gia Spiced by
Mazda, Arrived there, the “CcOmSéfénce (the soul
dena) . . . drags down the souls of the wicked into
the darkness, but bears up the souls of the faithful
over the bridge Cinvat, into the way of the gods."

Here a distinction is drawn between virtue and
sin; the wicked are punished, while the righteous
are rewarded. But a new element is introduced,
the test of the bridge, which the righteous alone
may cross in safety, an allegory that we shall find
elsewhere and which takes us away from the tradi-
tional weighing of the soul.

The weighing of the soul before a tribunal,
appears, however, in the later texts interpolated
into the Avesta by the Pehlevi theologians.

The chief judge is Mithra, the god of the Sun, of
Truth and of Justice. Near him, Rashnu holds a
golden balance in the scales of which the deeds of
men are placed. ‘‘He does not cause the divine
balance to drop one way or the other,’ either for

1 Séderblom, La vie future d’aprés le Mazdéisme, p. 85 (Musée
Guimet, Bibliotheque d’ études, t. ix).

2 This phrase often appears also in the Egyptian texts for the
estimating of human or divine justice.

134 Kings and Gods of Egypt

the good or for the wicked, either for kings or for
emperors; he doth not cause it to stir a hair’s

’

breadth, and he shows no favour.” A scrupulous

regard for justice is revealed in another feature.

Men whose good and evi al weight
~are- © a purgatory (Hamestagan), an inter-

__mediate stage between helandthe-abede-of the
good.

Finally, the still later texts of the Avesta present
a judgment of a new type, the last judgment, which
shall take place at the end of the world. Accord-
ing to a very ancient tradition, the earth shall
perish in a great fire. There shall come a time
when a supreme judge, Soshyans, shall begin his
reign. Then shall begin the resurrection of the
dead, and it shall be complete in fifty-seven years.
All the world shall be gathered together in one
large assembly and each man shall come face to
face with his good or evil deeds. The pious man
shall go at once to Paradise, but the impious shall
spend three days and three nights of torment in
hell. Then a meteor falling from the moon, shall
set the earth on fire. And from the fire men shall
in which there shall be no stain of evil and there-

how in this eschatological conception, the scruples

Immortality and Retribution — 135

of conscience have made the tradition of a cosmic
cataclysm, which shall bring about the end of the
world, serve an ethical purpose, although, origin-
ally, this final cataclysm had nothing to do with
ethics.

In India, the Rig-Veda, which dates at least as
far back as the tenth century B.C., does not give
a very clear account of any judgment of the dead.
Two gods, however, play an active part towards
the deceased. One is Yama, the first of the living,
who, like Osiris in Egypt, knew death and having
become a god of the dead, seems to point out to
mankind the way to the world beyond. He is
aided in his task by messengers, who, under the
guise of dogs (here, again, we recall the Egyptian
Anubis), go in search of men, guide them, and act
as psychopomp deities. The other god is Varouna,
the lord of vengeance and penalties, who controls
the deeds of the dead. The righteous are allowed
to live in the light near Yama and Varouna, while
the impious and unrighteous, those who have
sinned against the gods, must discharge the debts
they have incurred, and it is to Varouna they must
render their account. There is, here, no question
of a tribunal, or of a last judgment, only of a lim-
ited divine justice dealing with crimes committed

136 Kings and Gods of Egypt

against the gods. So was it in the first ages of
the Egyptian civilisation; the gods did not concern
themselves with the conduct of man towards man;
they inquired only whether he had discharged his
duty towards the gods themselves.

In the Buddhist books, the writing of which was
begun in the fifth century B.C., a higher ideal
appears. Buddha showed men the way to re-
demption. In order to attain true life, every being
must pass through a cycle of existences, each more
sanctified than the last, by the renunciation of
worldly joys, the annulment of all desires. Accord-
ing to this new conception, death does not confer
a new life upon the righteous. On the contrary,
perfect living ends in the annihilation of conscious
and responsible existence in the abyss of Nirvana.
A sort of automatic justice is meted out, not to the
part we call the human soul, but to the karman,
the permanent element in every being that ensures
the continuity of the individual through his
successive lives. There is no need of a judgment
giving access to Paradise or Hell; for immanent
justice determines after man’s successive deaths,
the condition of his future existences or his final
deliverance.

At a later period when Buddhism was adopt-
ed in other countries where the idea of judg-

Immortality and Retribution 137

ment was either traditional or an outgrowth of
the Mazdean and Hellenic doctrines—it has been
recently discovered how strong their influence was
in other fields, like those of the plastic arts and
dramatic poetry—we see that the notions of a
weighing of the soul, judgment of the dead, Para-
dise and Hell, impressed themselves upon Bud-
dhist art and theology. In a Buddhist picture
described by Maury, the dwellings of the gods are
represented with earth and hell beneath them.
In the upper ae of hell, Yama is seated on a
ay in his rrgk Se he holds a kind of fork,

“On the left of eae stands a personage who holds
a balance by the middle of its beam and weighs
the bodies of the deceased. At the foot of Yama’s
throne, ‘‘are two spirits, one good, the other evil;
they shake sacks full of pebbles which represent the
good and ot deeds of men—the pebbles of the

portrayed the torments o a Owing to its
universal and profoundty-human character, the
idea of judgment and psychostasy found its way

everywhere. It could be reconciled with doc-

t Revue archéologique, 1844, p. 294.

138 Kings and Gods of Egypt

- trines fundamentally opposed, like metempsycho-
sis and Nirvana.

If, now, we turn from Oriental mythology to
Christianity, we are again met by the belief in a
last judgment which shall call men together at the
end of time. But the conception is different from
that propounded in the sacred books of Iran. The
Avesta states that the world will end in a great
cataclysm of nature, by fire, and that the last
judgment shall take place simultaneously. But
the catastrophe is not presented as a consequence
of the misdeeds of the sons of men. With the
Semites, on the contrary, the idea of the last
judgment is rooted in a purely metaphysical and
ethical doctrine. The Lord will purge the earth
from evil by a definitive judgment, which shall
be like the deluge, a manifestation of divine justice
finally victorious over the sin and wickedness of
the world.

The gospel according to St. Matthew" describes
the Last Judgment in the following terms:

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all
the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the
throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered
all nations; and he shall separate them one from

« Chap. xxv.

Immortality and Retribution 139

another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the
goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but
the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto
them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the
foundation of the world; for I was an hungered, and ye
gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink;
I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye
clothed me. ... Then shall he say also unto them
on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire.

oa” ~—~- 2.

It is easy to trace in this account the essential

features of the Egyptian tradition. Amon-Ra,—

the divine judge, also places the righteous on his
right and sends the wicked to hell-fire. Christ’s
words of commendation regarding the-good deeds
of the righteous are identical with those pro-
nounced by the Egyptian deceased when he comes
before the tribunal of Osiris and enumerates the
merits of his life on earth. ‘‘I live by the truth, I
have propitiated God by my love; I have given
bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, and
garments to the naked.”

Also in the Apocalypse, which so often reveals
the impress of Oriental tradition, we should note

« Cf. A. Moret, In the Time of the Pharaohs, p. 258 et seq. Let
it be added that upon a stela of the XIIth dynasty, Osiris already
places the just ‘‘on his right”’ (Louvre, Stéle C, 3, 1. 19).

SUy
Ones

ery!
\0

140 Kings and Gods of Egypt

the apparition of an angel mounted on a black
horse, holding a balance in his hands.
We may note, further, the following features:

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before

God; and the books were opened . . . and the dead
were judged out of those things which were written
in the books, according to their works. ... This is

the second death. And whosoever was not found
written in the book of life was cast into the lake of
fire.

The same idea of a second death of the wicked in
hell is fully expressed in the Egyptian Book of the
Dead; even the texts of the Pyramids of the Vth
dynasty already point out that the dead must be
judged according to their deeds and their names
inscribed in the Book of Life in the next world, if
they are to enjoy a second life there. 3

Christianity has preserved side by side the two
forms of judgment; individual, at the death of
each man; the final, or last judgment, at the end
of the world. This twofold theme was treated by
the artists who decorated our cathedrals, and by
the author-monks, who wrote thereon many an
edifying treatise. ‘‘ Psychostasy generally forms

* Revelation, vi, 5. Cf. Maury, Revue archéologique, 1844,
p. 300.

? Revelation, xx, 12-15.

3A. Moret, In the Time of the Pharaohs, p. 211.

ITX 948Td
‘(I H9S ep e[dureq ‘sopéqy)
"Qreyy) = “yNIG—oonsnf Aq polopy SHISO

Immortality and Retribution 14!

a subject which is treated apart and is frequently
represented on the capitals of the pillars in our
churches.! . . . The same scenes are seen in the
miniature paintings in manuscripts from the thir-
teenth century to the sixteenth.’’? Sometimes
the psychostasy is but one episode in the great
scene of the Last Judgment or of the Resurrection;

jt-is-t Himself or the Archangel Michael

Saints, the weighing of the soul is not generally
associated with the Last Judgment. Like the
Egyptians and the Greek disciples of Plato, the
Christians of the Middle Ages believed that }
the test of the divine balance would be applied to
each man individually as soon as he had drawn his
last breath. The word of the Bible, ‘‘Thou hast
been weighed in the balance and found wanting,”
was read not in the spirit but in the letter, as is
proved by many a story in the Golden Legend.
As recently as the eighteenth century, a preacher
spoke of the individual judgment as of a case
coming before the tribunal of God; the accused,
assailed by demons, defended by the Virgin

t The church of the Holy Cross in St.-L6; the church of Monte-
villiers, the church of Saint-Nectaire, and on bas-reliefs in Saint-
Trophime in Arles.

2Maury, Revue archéologique, 1844, p- 236. Cf. E: Male,
L’art religieux du XITIe siécle, en France, p. 476 et seq.

142 Kings and Gods of Egypt

and the Saints, was undergoing trial for many
days.*

It was natural that the doctrine of Mahomet
should retainsmany features of the Eastern tradi-
tion. Take, for example, this description of the
Last Judgment from the Koran.

When therefore the trumpet shall be sounded, there
shall be no relation between them which shall be
regarded on that day; neither shall they ask assistance
of each other. They whose balances shall be heavy
with good works, shall be happy; but they whose
balances shall be light, are those who shall lose their
souls, and shall remain in hell for ever.”

——_—<—<————

Besides the weighing of the soul, the Koran
presents another allegory of judgment, the Maz-
dean test of the bridge, which was crossed easily
by the righteous, but which proves a pitfall to the
wicked.

« See the facts quoted by Maury, Revue archéologique, 1844, pp.
236-249. Paulin Paris (Catalogue des manuscrits frangats, t.
iv, p. 4) has published the case ‘‘of a clerk who was weighed in
the balance by Mgr. Saint-Michel, upon the accusation of an
enemy.”’ The soul was placed in the balance before God together
“with all the good he had said or done in his life, and on the other
side the evil that the enemy brought.”” And it was found that
the evil weighed marvellously more than the good. But the
Virgin Mary made the terrible balance weigh down on the other
side, by putting into the good scale all the Ave-Marias that the
clerk had recited.” In Egypt, the heart must not weigh heavier é

2 Koran, xxiii, 7.

Immortality and Retribution 143

é (called in Arabic al Sirat), which they
say is laid over the midst of hell, is described to be
“finer than a hair, and sharper than the edge of

a sword; . . . the good shall pass with wonderful
ease and swiftness like lightning or the wind;
whereas the wicked . . . fall down headlong into

hell, which is gaping benéath them.’’!

It is curious to see how this tradition impressed
Christian belief. As proof, instance the story in
the dialogues of St. Gregory the Great.?”

A soldier died of the plague in Constantinople. By
the grace of God, his soul returned to his body, so
that he was able to relate his experiences in the other
world. He told there was a bridge, beneath which
flowed a river and its waters wer clo

Beyond the bridge stretched green and smiling
me ,enamelled with sweet-smelling Towers, and

therein walked men clad in white apparel, breath-
ing forth a fragrant perfume. And upon the bridge
men underwent atest. When the wicked tried to cross
it, they fell into the dark and putrid river; whereas
the righteous _passed_safely-ower, and entered into
security in the pleasant pastures.

Thus there are transmitted from religion to
religion, the most diverse traditions concerning
the judgment.

Koran, Preliminary Discourse, Sale, p. 71.
2 Maury, loc. cit, p. 297.

133

Vw

144 Kings and Gods of Egypt

To sum up, a belief in a judgment of souls and the
material instruments to secure it—such as the bal-
ance—are common to many peoples of antiquity.
In the earliest historical times, justice is rudi-
mentary. Beit Osiris, Minos, Yama, or Varouna,
who presides over the tribunal, they all judge men
on utilitarian principles, not according to what
Kant has termed the categorical imperative. As
human conscience develops, God, or the gods, are
represented more perfect, and they in their turn
require greater perfection from their subjects.
Divine Justice is made guardian of the law and
of ethics. It demands retribution and redresses
wrong. This stage once reached, men no longer
discriminate between Justice and God, and lofty
speculations arise upon the metaphysical nature
of Justice and Truth.

In the Avesta, for instance}

divinity that any man creates by hic own good

deeds, and who takes on the shape of a fair maiden

who welcomes the righteous into another world.
OE

At the end of the third night, as day is breaking, the
soul of the righteous man wanders forth into a land
of flowers and perfumes. A wind, more fragrant
than any wind that blows, comes to him from the
south. ... Wafted upon this breeze, the faithful
soul sees his religion (or conscience, daéna) coming to

Immortality and Retribution 145

meet him under the guise of a young maiden, beautiful,

shining, lusty, her arms white, her limbs Tounded, her

breasts firm and curved, a goodly frame with the grace
of her fifteen years, and as fair in form as the fairest
creature that breathes. ... Then the soul of the
faithful asks: ‘‘What virgin art thou, loveliest to gaze
upon of all the virgins I have ever seen?” And she
replies to him: ““‘O young man of noble mind, of good
works, of good actions, of good religion, I am thine

own embodied conscience . . . thou didst love me for
my majesty, my beauty. Lovable, thou hast made

me more lovable; fair, thou hast made me fairer;
desirable, thou hast made me more desirable. .
Go forth into the Eternal Light.’

In the Vedas, the intimate union of Beauty and

j ness is no less forcibly expressed. Good ~~
and Evil are none other than Truth and Falsehood.

God is Truth and lives by Truth.

Plato comes to the same conclusion when he
describes the abode of the gods and tries to give
a definition of divine thought. The immortals
live in an ideal region, the Fields of Truth.

Real existence, colourless, formless, and intangible,
visible only to the intelligence which sits at the helm
of the soul, and with which the family of true science is
concerned, has its abode in this region. The mind of
deity, as it is fed by intelligence and pure science and
the mind of every soul that is destined to receive its

1 Sdéderblom, loc. cit., p. 83. Cf. Lefébure, ap. Sphinx, viii,
P. 39.
9

146 Kings and Gods of Egypt

due inheritance, is raptured at seeing the essence to
which it has so long been a stranger, and by the light
of truth is fostered and made to thrive. ... It sees
distinctly absolute justice, absolute temperance, and
absolute science; the justice, the temperance, the
science which exist in that which is real and essential
being. .. . Such is the life of the gods.’

Many centuries earlier the Egyptians had held
a similar doctrine. The hymns sung to the gods
about the XIXth dynasty, 1200 years B.C., prove
that at this time the cultivated minds did not dis-
criminate between Truth-Justice and the Supreme
Intelligence. What lies ate ca
really arcteei cia di ushce alata
“Thue Is toto As the gods do, is to become a God.?
Thus men cast off their mortal nature and passing
into another world put on in its place, a divine one.
The Bible word, ‘“‘I am the Truth and the Life,’”’
expresses perfectly the highest conception of
divinity formed by the Egyptians. Of the many
methods offered to the Egyptians whereby they
could secure in the next world the favour of God,
the one most likely to attract the greater number
of people was undoubtedly magic. But the minds,
with noble aspirations cherished a higher ideal
“to offer to God a sacrifice of Justice,’’ ‘to practise

1 Phedrus. Trans.: Wright, pp. 49-50.
2 In the Time of the Pharaohs, p. 256 et seq.

Immortality and Retribution 147

truth which God loves,’”’! and so, instead of striving
to overcome God by violence or to outwit him by
magic tricks, they sought to become like unto
him and thus to attain unto divinity.

t Texts of the VIth dynasty.

CHAPTER V
THE MYSTERIES OF IsIS

Asout the beginning of the Christian era,
Egypt, for the past three centuries under the
rule of the Greeks, was conquered by Octavius
and became the personal property of the Roman
Emperors. Reduced, thus, to a state of servitude,
“national life dwindled away; Christianity
was the last factor in the transformation and

gave the final blow to the decaying language,
customs and gods of Egypt. But, at the very

i eS Sh te A

moment when the Egyptian religion was dying
in its native land, it underwent a new birth ina

region where it was little expected, in Italy and the

a ed
Western Roman Empire. Osiris and Isis, the most

popular of the gods once ~ worshipped on the banks
of the Nile, emigrated into the Roman world
converted to their doctrines.

In the days when the Ptolemies controlled the
whole Mediterranean, their State gods, Serapis
and Isis, set out from Alexandria along with the

ee

The Mysteries of Isis 149

Egyptian missionaries and landed at Cyprus,
Antioch, Delos, and Sicily, where temples were
raised to them. They crossed the sea, yet again,
in trading-vessels, and their cult was spread abroad
by the merchants and sailors, who all worshipped
Isis, star of the sea, protector of seafaring men.
Leaving the ports of the Hellenic Mediterranean,
their galleys sailed along the coast of Italy, Gaul,
and Spain, bringing the worship of Isis to all the
places they visited, and leaving everywhere behind
them testimony, precious to us, in the form of
statuettes recently discovered, which have re-
vealed how widespread was the cult of the
Egyptian goddess.

Throughout Pharaonic Egypt, Isis held a
position subordinate to Osiris. But when Herod-
otus visited Egypt, she was already on the way
to become the most popular divinity, * universally
beloved and worshipped. Osiris, the god who had

magic knowled is _wite.? Looking closely

into the matter, was it not rather Isis who rescued
gods and men from death? With the feeling of
gratitude towards her as a saviour-goddess was
blended the special attraction, to be found in all

t Herodotus, ii, 100. 2 De Iside et Osiride, 27.

150 Kings and Gods of Egypt

religions, exercised by a deity who symbolises and
sublimates in herself the ideal of wifehood and
motherhood. For these reasons, the devotees,
who in the first centuries of our era received the
Osirian doctrines, adopted the patronage of the god
dess rather than of the god,t becoming known, in
the Roman world, by the name of Isiacs and soon
dominating all other sects in the Empire.

How can this wonderful vogue be explained?
In Greece, as in Italy, the State religion had failed
to provide men with a lofty ideal and an ethical
standard of life. Vulgar superstition, rites either
barbarous or become meaningless, puerile or
immoral legends—such were the externals of a
religion that had long ago lost its vitality and had
become, as Lucretius puts it, “‘the cause of so
much evil.’’ The priest left to the philosophers
investigations concerning the immortality of the
soul, divine justice, the hope of an eternal life and
retribution. But the speculations of a Pythagoras,
the sublime meditations of a Plato, were known
only to a few. Not far from Greece, in that
mysterious land of Egypt, there had lived men,
“‘the most religious of men,’ according to Herod-

tIn the Roman-epoch, many.ofthe.women-initiated into the
Osirian rites were no longer called ‘‘Osiris Such-an-one” but
“Hathorian Such-an-one,” which indicates the prevalence of the
worship of Isis-—Hathor.

The Mysteries of Isis 151

high and low, to salvation, had taught men how to
live in wisdom in order to be reborn divine after
death. These revelations, the possession of all
Egyptians, penetrated into Greece in the guise
of secret doctrines—the Orphic rites and the
Eleusinian mysteries.‘ Though we know that in
either one the speculations concerning the future
life and the means whereby to obtain it are derived
from an Egyptian source, we must not consider
them as servile imitators of Egyptian beliefs.
Both doctrines seem to have been strongly in-
fluenced by Egypt but to have developed on Greek
lines. It is only after the Ptolemies established
their rule in Egypt that the Greek world became
open to Alexandrine philosophy and Alexandrine
gods. It was only after Egypt had become the
crown property of the Czesars that the Roman
world began to be invaded by the statues of Osiris abet
and Isis, accompanied_by their priests.

The Isiac propaganda enlisted not only the
humble and poor, to whom it held out consolatory
hopes of future happiness, but, also, the cultivated
upper classes, philosophers, artists, and men of eau

——
—_—__

oo”
t Paul Foucart, Recherches sur’ origine et la nature des mysteres

d’Eleusis, 1895-
De

xk

(v

ar

152 Kings and Gods of Egypt

letters, who were moved with admiration for this
land of an ancient civilisation, of magnificent and
imperishable monuments, whose priests had taught

wisdom to the divine Plato. Everything coming

fromthe Nile became fashionable in Italy—bronzes,

vases, furniture, stuffs, jewellery. Menattempted

to put these objects in a native setting, as can
be seen in the paintings on the walls of Hercula-
neum and Pompeii. Many of these vividly
‘coloured frescoes represent an Egyptianised land-
scape, here a winding river, shaded by palm-trees;
there a bit of country peopled by sphinxes, where
ibises flutter their wings in the sunshine, crocodiles
“stretch themselves upon the sand, hippopotamuses
raise their heads from the waters, monkeys climb
along the trees or wrestle with negroes or pigmies.
All these reproductions and reminiscences of Egypt
enjoy _a popularity which is only equalled by the
keen interest aroused by the Egyptian religion
self i: Re ee pa a

As far back as 105 B.C., we find a Serapeum at

Pouzzoles and an Iseum at Pompeii. Rome had

built a temple t is in the time of Sulla. The

struggle of Antony and Cleopatra against Octavius

«Cf. G. Lafaye, Histoire du culte des divinités d’ Alex-
andrie, 1884. F. Cumont, Les religions orientales dans
l’empire romain, 2d ed., 1909.

The Mysteries of Isis 153

may have thrown some discredit upon Egyptian
cults, for they were forbidden in Rome during the
reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. But in 38 A.D.
Caligula consecrated the great Roman temple in
the Field of Mars to Isis Campensis. Henceforth
the Emperors, themselves, set the example of
veneration for the goddess, while the legions of
zesar, the merchants, and the Roman settlers
spread the Isiac cult over Africa, Gaul, and Ger-_
mania,* and in every country where the Roman
eagle flew. It reached its zenith in the time of
the Antonines. In fact, for five h
from the first century B.C., to the fourth A.D.,
mankind sought for comfort in a sysyem of belie
and worship that had originated 1

Wherein, then, lay the attraction of the Egyp-
tian doctrine? In the, first place, in its secret
character, in the fact that it was reserved for the

initiated. ‘To reveal its mysteries was forbidden.
—_——

: For information regarding relics of the Isiac cult in Europe, see
E. Guimet, L’Isis romaine; Lafaye, op. cit., p. 162; Ad. Erman, ©, ;
Aegyptische Religion, p. 352. The Church of St. Germain-des- MWe
Prés in Paris possessed, until the XVIth century, a statuette of
Isis; the Cflurch of ot. Urst oast of a statue
of “Isis Unconquered.” M.Guimet has gathered together in the
Musée Guimet the Isiac objects found in Gaul, and following his
initiative, several European museums have searched in their
neighbourhood for Isiac figures, hitherto neglected, and have
begun a collection.

154 Kings and Gods of Egypt

The two writers, Plutarch and Apuleius,’ who
alone give us any information upon the subject,
break off emphatically just at the moment when
our curiosity is completely aroused. We gather
then very little from their half-revelations about
the process of initiation, but fortunately for us
the ruins of certain temples, of which the best
preserved are at Pompeii, contain representations
which enable us to obtain a fairly accurate idea
of the religious lives of the Isiacs.

The centre of their life was the Iseum, a temple
which in no particular recalls the magnificent
Greek remains to be seen in the same region at
Pestum, or in Sicily at Agrigentum and Segesta.
Was the Iseum of Pompeii a reproduction, on a
smaller scale, of the famous Serapeum of Alex-
andria, dedicated by Ptolemy Soter to Isis and
Serapis? From the description of Rufinus,? who

t Plutarch, who was high-priest of Apollo at Delphi, at the end
of the first century, had dedicated his treatise De Iside et Osiride
to a priestess of Dionysos, Clea, who was an Isiac. Apuleius has
told the story of his initiation into the Mysteries of Isis in Book
XI of the Metamorphoses, written about 160 A.D.

? Hist. Eccl., ii, 23. Cf. Ammien Marcellin, xxii, 17, who
extols the magnificent library lodged in an annex of the Serapeum.
The following description is by Rufinus, who visited the Serapeum
about the end of the fourth century.

“The mound on which it has been built was formed, not by
nature, but by the hand of man. It towers above a mass of
buildings and is reached by more than one hundred steps. It
extends on all sides in a square of great dimensions. All the

ULI eos Sih

‘odurog 38 SIST jo ojdwiay oy} Ur unIesoTy ‘eTPED ‘vory

The Mysteries of Isis 155

visited the Serapeum at the end of the fourth
century, we gather that this monument differed
essentially from the traditional Pharaonic temple
by the greater importance given to those parts
reserved for the priests and worshippers ; the shrine
of the god only occupied the central portion; all
around were the buildings used for teaching
purposes and for the contemplative life. The

erapeum was not only a church; it was also a
conven and :

The Iseum of Pompeii did not have these
colossal dimensions. As we know it to-day, it
occupies the site of an older temple, destroyed by
the earthquake of 63, rebuilt before any other in
Pompeii by a zealous community and already in

lower part, up to the level of the pavement, is vaulted. This
basement which receives the light from above through openings,
is divided into secret chambers, separated from one another and
serving divers mysterious functions. The circuit of the upper
story is occupied by conference halls, cells for the pastophori and
a very high building, generally inhabited by the guardians of the
temple and the priests who have taken vows of chastity.—
Behind these buildings, on the inside, cloisters run along the four
sides in a square. In the centre rises the temple, decorated with
columns of precious material and built of magnificent marbles,
employed in profusion. It contains a statue of Serapis, of such
proportions that it can touch one wall with the right and the other
with the left hand. It is affirmed that all kinds of metals and
woods enter into the composition of this colossal figure. The
walls of the sanctuary are reputed to be covered first with plates
of gold, then with plates of silver, and on the outside is a third
layer of bronze for the purpose of protecting the two others.”

156 Kings and Gods of Egypt

use when there occurred the final catastrophe of
the year 79.

In the centre of a square court (area), surround-
ed by the.ruins of a colonnade, was the sanctuary
(cella), decorated by a pediment upborne by seven
columns and reached by a flight of seven steps.
Within the sanctuary is seen a base which served
at one and the same time as a pedestal for the
statue of Isis and a closet for the storing of the
articles used in the service of worship. On the left
of the court a large altar and a few smaller ones
for sacrifices have been discovered; near at hand is
a small square building with a narrow underground
passage where two benches are cut in the masonry.
This is supposed to have been the megarum or
probation-hall where the aspirants to initiation
slept at night, to be visited by Isis in prophetic
dreams. Behind the sanctuary, the outside wall
is pierced by five large openings giving access
to a larger hall, which is believed to have been
the schola, a place for meetings, banquets, and the
lectures attended by the Isiacs. Adjoining the
schola was a vestry with a fountain for purposes
of purification. Lastly, between the temple and
the neighbouring municipal theatre can be traced
the lodgi the priests, in the remains of a
suite of five rooms. (Plate XIII).

The Mysteries of Isis 157

If the Iseum of Pompeii was neither Greek nor
Pharaonic, perhaps other cities may have possessed
temples of the Egyptian type. At Beneventum, a
certain Lucilius Labienus erected, in 188 A.D., at
his own expense, ‘‘an august temple to Isis the

of the Earth Nether World, lady

of Beneventum....”! Of this temple, there
<emain only the fragments of two red granite
obelisks which came from Egypt. Engraved
thereon, in bad hieroglyphics, we read the dedi-
cation by the donor to Isis, and prayers for the
salvation of his Emperor Domitian. May it be
that the temple exhibited, along with the obelisks,
pylons, hypostyles, a shrine hidden away behind
high walls, embedded, as it were in masonry?
Perhaps it is only the details that were borrowed
from Egypt as an attempt to impart local colour,
such as is seen in the temple represented on a
fresco at Herculaneum, where sphinxes crouch on
either _side of the sanctuary door. Moreover, a
temple like that of Pompeii was better adapted
for the devotional exercises of a religion which
fostered continuous communion between the

x Concerning the obelisks of Beneventum, see the articles by
A. Erman and A. Baillet in Aegyptische Zeitschrift, 1896, p- 194,
and 1903, p- 147-

158 Kings and Gods of Egypt

goddess and her votaries. In ancient times, a
temple was meant to be primarily a place of
safety for the statue of the gods; it was the house
of the gods before it was a place of worship. The
Iseum of Pompeii foreshadows the Christian
ecclesia; it already provides a large space in which a
great assembly of worshippers can gather around a
small shrine.

Let us now penetrate, like the initiate, into the
temple. The worshipper of Isis rises before dawn
to attend the morning service or Isiac matins.
The cult has borrowed from the Egypti

three daily services.‘ In the Greek and Roman

‘temples, sacrifices were made only upon certain
festal days, but here the religious ceremonies were

repeated every day. Nor is the worship limited
pee ee

to the monotonous rites of the slaughtering of
victims and the consultation of the auspices; a
holy drama of divine sacrifice, followed with
intense emotion by the people, is actually per-
formed on festal days; on ordinary days it is
simply alluded to in the prayers. This drama is
the Passion of Osiris.

Let us gaze upon it as though we were the in-

* Décret de Rosette, 6d. Chabas, p.-45. Cf. A. Moret, Le rituel
du culte divin journalier en Egypte, p. 221.

The Mysteries of Isis 159

itiate. The priests await the coming of the congre-
gation. In front stands the high-priest, an ascetic
figure with shaven or tonsured crown, his face,
too, is smooth, in conformation with the rule for
cleanliness imposed by the ritual; he is clad in a
linen robe of palest azure hue, which calls to mind
the flower of the flax, fruit of the earth, the gift
of Isis and Osiris. In order that the body, the
abode of the soul, shall be unhampered by matter,
in order that he may devote his life to learning, to
meditation, and to the teaching of holy things, the
high-priest must refrain from all excesses in food
and drink. A sacerdotal hierarchy is placed
under him, as in Egypt:_ prophets, admitted to
intercourse with the gods; stolists,—priests and
priestesses, who robe and disrobe the statues of
the gods with stuffs, alternately black and bright
to teach us that our knowledge of the gods is
the processions, the little shrines wherein the holy
statuettes dwell and of whom it is said that they

rd in their souls, as in a basket, the holy-doc-

a
trines, pure from all superstition, uncontaminated

by any alien influence.’ These priests of the

t Lafaye, J. c., p. 151. The lives of the Isiac priests were so
pure that Tertullian proposes them as a model _for Christians.
2 De Iside et Osiride, 3-5. In the temples of Isis and of Sera-_
pis, there were, moreover, scribes, singers, and musicians, who

160 Kings and Gods of Egypt

second grade are clad in long, light-coloured robes,
drawn close about them, leaving the breast, the
arms, and the shaven head bare. As they are
“often Negroes or Egyptians, their dark flesh stands
out in bold relief from the light garments. The
priestesses wear long, transparent, crinkled robes;
their tresses are bound like a diadem upon their
brows, and the distinctive feature of their apparel
is a fringed scarf, both ends of which are knotted
upon the breast (Plate XIV). The stolists of
either sex carry a sprinkler or a little vessel,
rounded into the semblance of a woman’s bosom,
because the holy Wetec eee eee
of the goddess Isis* (Plate XV hey also
shake in their hands the quivering sistrum, emblem
of the Egyptian goddesses; its jingling rods lend
a rhythm to the movements of the congregation,
at the same time repelling Seth, the murderer of
Osiris, the evil spirit.

The sistrum signifies, by its quiver, that all beings
must be aroused and liberated from the moral and
physical state of torpor into which they are ever liable
to fall; on the handle of the sistrum, the figures of Isis

played on divers flutes, the harp, and the cymbals, and performed
special liturgical music (Lafaye, p. 137 ef seq.).

*E. Guimet, L’ Isis romaine; Apuleius, xi: ‘Idem gerebat
vasculum in modum papilla rotondatum de quo lacte libebat.”’

The Mysteries of Isis 161

and Nephthys must be engraved as a magic protec-
tion, and, if it has four bars, it is because all the
movements of matter result from the combination of
the four elements, earth, air, fire, water.*

ob i ES ian taken ch

These priests, mostly of Egyptian origin, move
in appropriate surroundings. The outside walls
of the cella, the megarum, the schola are decorated
with reliefs or frescoes setting forth legends from
Egyptian sources but modified by artists into a
composite mythology. Here is Serapis,? who has
borrowed from Zeus-Jupiter his majestic coun-
tenance, yet, between the curls on his forehead,
shoot forth the curved horns of the Amon-ram,

while his brow is surmounted by a basket (cala-
thos), eS ee of
abundance. Osiris lies swathed in the funeral
shroud, crowned with the high mitre, holding in
his crossed fists, the crook and whip, while at his
feet is placed a skull, symbol of his lordship over
the Nether World. Isis, twice holy, as woman and

goddess, reveals her noble and gracious form
beneath a transparent raiment; she raises a

t De Iside et Osiride, 63.

2 Serapis is the State god of the Greek Ptolemaiekings. It has
been disputed whether the name and character of this god are of
purely Egyptian origin (Osiris-Apis), or whether they are from
Sinope or Babylon. M. Isidore Lévy has proved this second
theory to be without foundation (Revue Hist. des Religions,
I9IO).

eS a

162 Kings and Gods of Egypt

sistrum and clasps the cross of life (Fig. 9); Isis
mother, holds in her lap the infant, Horus, who
carries his finger to his lips* in an attitude that
has become traditional in the representations of
the Madonna and the infant Jesus. Farther on is
Anubis, leader of the souls, who holds erect his
dog-like head above a close-fitting Roman tunic;
Thot, the ibis stalks along on the slender legs of his
tribe, a monster with the head of a lion and the
body of a hippopotamus, the “Devourer” of the
Egyptian texts, which swallows the wicked in
the other world, and opens its large jaws to carry
out the sentence of the Osirian tribunal. Seth-
Typhon, grim and hieratic, takes his place among
the luminous gods, even as night attends on day.
Into this procession of gods of the Osirian legend
are introduced other figures from the Greek
mythology.’

1 The interpretation of this gesture in Greco-Roman times is

that Horus raises a finger to his mouth tq«Omman
which is due to the mysteries. It is more probable that originally

“the gesture alluded rather to the creative power of the divine

Cf. E. Guimet, Plutarque et’ Egypte.

2In the megarum of Pompeii, plaster bas-reliefs represent Ares
and Aphrodite, Hermes and a nymph, surrounded by little cupids
with various attributes; in the dwellings of the priests were seen
Dionysos, Narcissus, Chiron instructing Achilles; in the schola
were two large pictures of the abduction of Io, who was iden-
tified, because of her cow-shape, with Isis-Hathor, and the arrival
of the goddess in Egypt. In the megarum and the cella, a series
of,plaster medallions set forth the various attributes of the Isiac

Roman Isis.
(Musée du Capitole).
Plate XIV

{i

The Mysteries of Isis 163

Such is the scenery of the Isiac matins which
are now about to begin. While the congregation
gathers in the front of the sanctuary, the high-
priest, clad in white raiment, mounts the steps and
draws apart the white curtains’ and reveals to
their eyes the awful image of the goddess. The
statue found at Pompeii is of marble, painted and
gilded. The goddess stands erect, her legs close
in the customary hieratic attitude; her right arm,
as far as the elbow, clings to her side; the fore-
arm is raised and holds the sistrum, the left arm
hangs down beside her body and clasps the handled
cross 7 the emblem of life. The hair, formerly
gilded, is separated into many slender braids,
some fall about her shoulders, the others are
gathered about her brow to form a coronet which is
wrought with flowers. The colour of the trans-—

parent clinging robe is red, its edges trimmed with

cult, mingled with interlaced foliage. There were seen in suc-
cession, the eagle of the Ptolemies; a bull’s skull, recalling the
sacrificial animal; a radiating ureus; a flying bird; a dwarf
gladiator; the typhonian animal seated and snapping his jaws; a
symbolic figure which looks like a foetus surrounded by ears of
corn; a vessel in which Isis carried Nile water; and finally the
sistrum which the goddess shakes (cf. Mazois, xi, Pl. 4; Guzman,
Pompeti, p. 87).

‘It is the apertio templi, “the opening of the temple” (Apu-
leius, xii). Inthe Egyptian ritual, “the opening of the doors of
the shrine” was welcomed by hymns which have been preserved
(A. Moret, Rituel du culte divin, p. 67).

164 Kings and Gods of Egypt

embroidery of gold.

Round her neck is a
broad necklace from
which small pendants
fall, those on the
breast are in the form
of a moon-crescent
andastar. A girdle
gathers the robe be-
neath her breast, its
clasp adorned with
two crocodile heads,
the crocodile being
the typhonian animal
subject to the goddess
(Fig. 9).

Before the image,
thus revealed, the
priests pour libations
of holy water, sup-
posed to

come from
the Nile,’

1}

|

ti

(|

i

Fic. 9.—The Statue of Isis in the Temple at and sprinkle
Pompeii.

(Real Museo Borbonico, t. xiv, pl. 35.)

the congre-

Commentary of Servius upon the neid, iv, 512: “In
templo Isidis aqua sparsa de Nilo esse dicebatur.”

The Mysteries of Isis 165

gation; the sacred fire is then prepared so that, ac-
cording to Egyptian ritual, the sanctuary may be
purified by fire and water. Next, the high-priest,
standing on the threshold of the cella, awakens the
goddess, addressing her in the Egyptian language;*
at his bidding, she arouses from her slumber, com-
pelled to obey the priest who knows her true name. 2
The tribute of burnt-offering is offered up upon
the altars and with voices upraised in song, the
servants of the faith salute the first hour of the day.

It was probably at this first service that the
stolists robed the image of the goddess and ar-
ranged her hair according to the rite described
by Apuleius, in the procession of Navigium Isidts.
It was the duty of the women to present to the
goddess a mirror and pins wherewith to secure her
hair. The raiment of the goddess varied according
to the festivals, but it generally retained one
characteristic (Plate XIV), the fringed scarf
fastened on the breast in what was called the
Isiac knot. Finally the statue was adorned with
jewels, then a sistrum and a golden vessel were
placed in its hands. How tawdry become our

« Porphyrius, De abstinentia, iv,9. Cf. Cumont, loc. cit., pp-
143 and 344 (Tov Alyurrlov port eyelper Tov Océbv).

2 For the magic power of the “name” see A. Moret: In the

Time of the Pharaohs, p. 299.
3 Apuleius, Metamorphoses, Xi, 4- H. E. Butler’s translation.

166 _ Kings and Gods of Egypt

Madonnas gf Italy and Spain if compared with this
porgeous and radiant image that delighted the
eyes of all who gazed upon it. The Isis discovered

“at Cadiz? wore a diadem heavy with pearls, emer-
alds, carbuncles, hyacinths, and crystals of flint.
In her ears, two pearls and two emeralds glistened ;
the same stones sparkled on her bosom, upon her
wrists and ankles; two diamond rings blazed upon
her little finger, while the other fingers shone with
pearls and emeralds. The inventory of the tem-
ples of Isis, discovered at Nemi, gives us a detailed
| list of all the articles of attire and adornment that
| went to make the image of the goddess a splendid
| vision, and we understand how she so dazzled her
| adorers that after the service had ended they
| would ‘‘tarry in the temple” to worship her “‘to
the full of their heart’s delight.”

The temple remained open, and about two

o'clock in the afternoon the songs of the priests
called the people to a second service, which might
be styled the Vespers of Isis. We do not know
what ceremonies were then performed; we only
know that much time was devoted to contempla-

tion and meditation before the sacred images.
There is a fresco in Herculaneum that portrays
for us the adoration of a vessel said to contain

1 Cf. Lafaye, pp. 135-137.

The Mysteries of Isis 167

Nile water, one of the many symbols of Osiris
(Plate XVI,1). The high-priest, turning his back
to the cella and facing the congregation, raises the
sacred chalice to the level of his chest and offers
it for their adoration. The worshippers form two
groups, one on either side of a smoking altar, and
they sing while shaking their sistrums to the
accompaniment of the fiute: *

A short service closed the day. The sanctuary
was purified with burning kyphi,? and the statue
was disrobed for the night; the curtains were
drawn and the goddess was left to sleep till morn-
ing. To the devotees of both sexes had been
granted the ecstatic joy of spending long hours
face to face with the divinity. “What we most
desire of the gods is to know them,”’ wrote Plu-
tarch3 to the high-priestess Clea; in like manner,
many centuries earlier, the Egyptian worshipper
yearned for no greater happiness than “to behold
the god in his fair festivities of the earth and
heaven.’

t The plan, decoration, and frescoes of the Iseum of Pompeii
described here can be seen reproduced in the Isiac Gallery in the
Musée Guimet, Paris.

2 According to Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 80-81, resin
was burnt in the morning, myrrh at noon, and kyphi at the even-
ing service. The daily cult also included three sacrifices to the

Sun (52) made in the course of the day, as in the Egyptian temples.
3 De Iside et Osiride, 1.

168 Kings and Gods of Egypt

This daily worship was nevertheless but the
humblest manifestation of the piety of the Isiacs.
On certain festival days, all the mysterious figures
described above, which enlivened the walls of the
temple, all those emblematic instruments, full of
secret significance, which excited the curiosity of
the profane and haunted the minds of the initiated,
seemed to detach themselves from the walls and
descend as tangible apparitions into the temple.
Those ibises, an exotic inanimate fiction, upon the
walls, behold! they come to motion and stalk
live birds, with stately tread, around the slender
palm-trees transplanted inside the temple; and a
procession advances, composed of priests and
priestesses, masked in the semblance of gods and
strange animals,’ tricked out in symbolic attires,
and bearing quaint emblems; but as it moves for-

t The Egyptian priests and sometimes the Pharaohs (Diodorus,
i, 62) put on these masks in processions or ceremonies in the
temples (cf. Mariette, Denderah, iv, Plate 31). In Rome char-
acteristic incidents occurred. In 43 B.c., the edile, M. Volusius,
wishing to leave the town without being known, borrowed from
one of his friends, an Isiac initiate, a wooden head of the dog
Anubis, and wearing it, walked through the streets, gesticulating
and employing all the mimicry used in the celebration of the
Mysteries (V. Maximus, vii, 3, 8). The Emperor Commodus
followed one day a procession of Isiacs with shaved head and
carrying in his arms an image of the dog Anubis, repeatedly caus-
ing the idol to fall over and knock with its muzzle upon the head

of the priests (Lampridus, Commodus, ix). Cf. Lafaye, op. laud.,
pp. 46 and 62.

The Mysteries of Isis 169

ward, with rhythmic tread, to the music of a march
—whereof, surely, Mozart caught the echo when he
wrote the Magic Flute,—are they not the very gods
and goddesses themselves, become incarnate for
the benefit of man? The Egyptian ritual delights
in this twofold presentment, symbolic and tangible,
of the doctrines. The Osiris myth conjured up
daily in the prayers is, on feast-days, actualised,
made manifest to the senses as a true vision never
more to be forgotten; as a pageant of the dolorous
events, the awful mysteries of the Passion of Osiris.

What were these festivals? The most important
_occurred in the spring and~autumm. The life
of the gods blooms and fades with the seasons.
The death and renewal of plants, the rising and
setting of the sun call to mind the death and
resurrection of Osiris.

is

They say that Osiris is butied when they put the .\ ©
seed in the grournd, that he1 f again and comes J.
back to the earth when the see n to sprout;

that is why Isis brings forth Horus-the-Child (Har-

pocrates) about the time of the winter solstice; after

the spring equinox a festival is celebrated to com- c
memorate the maternity of Isis."

Apuleius has given us a vivid description of the
spring festival which he witnessed at Cenchree,

t De Iside et Osiride, 65, 70.

170 Kings and Gods of Egypt

one of the three seaports of Corinth, and which
was called the Festiva 1 Isis (Isidis
Navigium).* It took place on the 5th of March,

when the winter winds having ceased, the-sea-s.
again open for navigation. It was natural that in
countries bordering on the Mediterranean, the
festival of the spring shanld hecome—a, festival of
the sea. I must refer the reader to Apuleius’
for the picturesque details of the procession, which
I mention here only on account of its significance.
At the vanguard of the procession, the populace
disported itself in many a merry guise, in a spirit
of carnival frolic. Then came the retinue of Isis
itself, in successive grades of nobility—musicians,
choir, the initiated, priests—typifying the myste-
ries as they gain in purity and elevation in passing
from the minds of the common folk to the minds
of the chosen few. Last of all came the gods, in
the form of venerable images or allegorical objects
borne aloft upon the shoulders of the chief dig-
nitaries, and at the end of the procession appeared
the emblem of Isis, a small golden urn, with a
handle coiled into a ureus (cf. Plate XV), con-
taining the holy water, substance and symbol of

t Metamorphoses, ix; cf. Lafaye, l.c., p. 121.
2See Apuleius, Metamorphoses, Book XI, in the excellent
translation of H. E. Butler, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1910.

The Mysteries of Isis Lipa

Osiris.t When the procession reaches the sea-
shore, the high-priest purifies the vessel according
to the ritual, dedicates it to Isis, and the votive
ship, built of precious material, and laden with
offerings, is launched.’

The autumn festival was, however, still more
important because at that time there was a re-
presentation of the death and resurrection of Osiris.
On the 13th of November, which corresponds to
the 17th Athyr of the Egyptian calendar, Osiris
fell a victim to the murderer Seth-Typhon. On
an improvised stage in the temple, the priests,
clad, as we have seen, in the garb of the gods,
performed a masque, the Osirian mystery.
Though the texts we possess give us no very clear
information, it is certain that the murder of Osiris
was realistically represented—the launching on the
Nile of the chest containing his body; the wailings
and quest of Isis, searching the depths of the water,
wandering even to Byblos to recover the body and
bring it back to Egypt. The audience mingled

«Cf. De Iside et Osiride, 36. The Egyptian vessel is also a
symbol of Osiris. Cf. Lanzone, Dizionario dt mitologia egizia,
Plate CCXCIV.

2A simi e of the s
Catania in Sicily (cf. Lafaye, P- 126; Cumont, p- 345)-

3 The return of Isis from Phoenicia was commemorated in a
special festival in December, the 7th Tybi. Plutarch describes
some features of the ceremony: “When the nights becoming

rated at

172 Kings and Gods of Egypt

their tears with the woeful lamentations of the
goddess. ‘‘They imitated the gesticulations of a

WT

mother overcome with grief. The quest was so
thrilling, the wailings so piercing, that they
annoyed the public outside the temple, and Ovid
is greatly provoked by ‘“‘this god whom they have
never finished seeking.””? An inscription, dating
from the beginning of our era, tells us that at
Gallipoli the episode of Isis was performed on a
body of water that was called the Nile, the ini-
tiated acting the parts of pilots and searchers,
sailing to and fro upon the water and letting down

nets into it.’ Isis appeared, mourning and in

longer increased the darkness and caused the light to wane rapid-
ly, the priests were wont, in one of many mournful ceremonies, to
throw over a golden bull a black covering of linen fabric, by reason
of the mourning of the goddess, and they exposed it to the public
throughout four consecutive days, from the 17th of the month
(of Athyr), because they regard the bull as the living image of
Osiris.

“These four days of mourning have each their meaning. On
the first day, they mourn for the falling of the waters of the Nile
and their return to their channel; on the second, for the flight of
the North winds compelled to give up their sway to the South
wind (the Simoon); on the third, for the decline of day which has
become shorter than night; on the fourth, for the bare condition
of the earth after the trees are bereft of their foliage. ... (De
Iside, 39). ‘‘When the time has come for the funeral of Osiris,
the priests cut wood with which to make a chest in the shape of a
crescent moon. ...” (De Iside, 41).

« Minutius Felix, Octav., 21.

2 Metam., ix, 692: ‘‘Nunquam satis quesitus Osiris.”

3Paul Foucart, Mystéres d’Eleusis, p- 37- Lafaye quotes an

The Mysteries of Isis 173

tears; she sought her husband’s remains, and as
she found them she put them aside with care, all
the time hiding herself from the eyes of Seth.*
When all the fragments of the divine body had
been recovered, the mournful dirges of this Festival
of All the Dead were turned into songs of joy.
It was on the third day that Osiris had been found
(Osiris inventus) and had risen again (Osiris ex se
natus).2 “‘On the night of the 19th day of Athyr
(15th November), the priests go down to the
seashore, bearing in a sacred ark a golden vessel
which they ll with sweet water. Then all the
assembly raise their voices and cry that Osiris
is risen.” Sometimes, a priest in the garb of
Anubis comes forward at this moment, leading
a little child by the hand; this is the newborn
Osiris. Another rite which illustrates the re-
surrection is described at Denderah. ‘They
mixed earth with sweet water, spices, and grains
of wheat and barley; from this paste they fashioned
a little figure in the form of a crescent, dressed, and
adorned it.”"4 The Egyptian texts explain that

ee

Ephesian inscription which seems to refer to a similar rite in
Isis worship (p. 144)-

t De Iside et Osiride, 59-

2Lafaye, l. c., p. 127, n. 8. Juvenal, Sat., viii, 29.

3 Lactantius, Divin. Institut., a2 Kk.
- 4 De Iside et Osiride, 39; of. 52. See ante, p- 81.

174 Kings and Gods of Egypt

this figure was buried and that, when the grains
of wheat and barley sprouted in the springtime,
Osiris was manifestly born again.

The resurrection of Osiris was commemorated
by great rejoicings (hilaria), during which the
Isiacs filled the streets and public places, an object
of shame and disgust to some of the population,
an amusing, delightful sight to others. The ini-
tiated assembled at a banquet (cena Serapiaca).*
Sometimes games were held in a circus. Is it
perhaps a sacred entertainment of this kind that
is represented in one of the frescoes at Hercu-
laneum? On a stage in a theatre, or it may be in
the temple, a negro, crowned with reeds and lotus
flowers, performs a step dance, resting one hand
on his hip, while he gesticulates with the other.
Priests and priestesses give a rhythmic accompani-
ment to his dance, upon the flute and the jingling
sistrum? (Plate XVI, 2).

Can it be wondered at, that such pageants
appealed to the popular imagination? The great
changes of nature were presented in the shape of a

_? Tertullian, i, 474.

?Pausanias (x, 32, 12) also describes two festivals, of the
spring and autumn, which were celebrated in the temple of Isis
of Tithorea in Phocis. In Rome, the Isiacs marched in proces-
sions along the streets and paused at certain temporary altars
called pause. Cf. Lafaye, 1. c., p. 128.

The Mysteries of Isis 175

human drama; Osiris died as all men die, but he
was born again, in order to teach men how they
too might enter upon a new life; the death and
rebirth of the god, corresponding to the changes
of the seasons, aroused in the hearts of believers
similar feelings of joy and sorrow. But the inner
meaning escaped the majority of the spectators;
it was the initiated alone, who fully understood it;
the pathetic legend of Osiris opened the way of a
virtuous life and a happy death; it provided man
with an example for his own destiny.

How did one become an initiate and what were
the mysteries disclosed to the happy few?? Apu-
leius, in the Metamorphoses, recounting his dedica-
tion to the goddess, reveals little of the mysteries,
but he gives some very precious information
concerning the state of mind of the neophyte and
the different stages of probation through which he
passes. The hero of the novel, Lucius, in whom we
recognise Apuleius himself, has led a dissipated
life and has been changed into an ass by a witch.
But during the Festival of the Ship of Isis (Navi-
gium Isidis), already referred to, the good goddess
is so touched by his sorrows and his remorse, that
she restores him to his human shape, but, only on

1 The Initiati or Isiaci formed colleges (collegia Isidis) over
which presided a Father or Mother (Pater, Mater sacrorum).

176 Kings and Gods of Egypt

condition, that Lucius enrols himself in her “sacred
soldiery’’* and dedicates to her the remainder of
his life.

Lucius tries, loyally, to keep his promise. He
rents a cell in the precincts of the temple,’ and
attends the daily services of the goddess, listens to
the teaching given from the pulpit, lives in in-
tercourse with the priests, and worships the goddess
unceasingly; every night he sees her in his dream
and is admonished by her to become initiated
into her mysteries. But the strict s_ of the
faith, the obligations of chastity and abstinence,
hold him back. At last, touched by the grace of

ee

t The Isiac, like the initiate to the rites of Mithra, called him-
self a ‘‘soldier of the god’”’; the Christians also are styled “soldiers
of Christ.”

2In imitation of the great Serapeum in Alexandria, the Isiac
temples in Europe had chambers, or were connected with build-
ings, in which the candidates to initiation confined themselves,
like Apuleius, during the time of their novitiate, ‘under a volun-
tary yoke of service.” In Egypt, at the time of the Ptolemies
this novitiate was rigorous. The neophytes who submitted to
living as recluses (kdroxov) in the prison (karox7#) of the temple,
would sometimes await for ten, twelve, or sixteen years, the con-
secration of that baptism which would restore them to liberty
and worldly life. See Reitzenstein, Die Hellenistischen Mysterien
religionen (1910), pp. 72-80.

3 According to Apuleius, there was in the temple of Cenchrez a
hall in which the people assembled in congregation (concio) and
the Isiac priest preached to them froma pulpit (suggestus). These
statements are of great importance as they manifest a revolution
in the religious practice; the Greek and Roman worships do not

include any teaching, and the temples do not exhibit any pulpits.

The Mysteries of Isis 177

the goddess, he entreats the high-priest to initiate
him into the secrets of the Holy Night* (ut me
noctis sacrate tandem arcanis initiaret). But the
priest, without discouraging him, warns him not
to be over-eager, “neither to delay when sum-
moned, nor to hasten unbidden.”” “The goddess
herself would call him at the appointed time; in

her hands are the keys of Hell and the .
_salvation ; the act of de fe ei pene ie
vo eath, followed a ne i he

entering upon a new life. T herefore, he must
await the day ordained by the goddess. excited

by the deferment, Lucius, more sedulous than
; ever, attends the services and prepares himself by
fasting for the holy probation. At length comes a
night, when the goddess warns him that the
moment of his long desire has arrived; she decrees
the amount he must pay for the cost of his recep-
tion and ordains that the high-priest become his
god-father. ”

On the same day, after morning service, the
high-priest brings forth from a secret place in the

t In Egypt, also, the SS aU Raha era
(Herodotus, ii, 60). T @s lasted throughout twenty-
four hours, and are “the vigil of the twelve hours of the day and
the twelve hours of the night’? (Junker, Dvze Stundenwachen

. 1910).

2Or, more exactly, his ‘‘father.” The Ptolemaic xdroxo use
the same expression to designate the priest who initiates them.

178 Kings and Gods of Egypt

shrine, certain books written in an unknown script
—in hieroglyphics—and reads them to the neo-
phyte. Lucius, escorted by a band of the ini-
tiated, is led to the baths, near by, where he is
immersed in the font (Javacrum) and undergoes
the rite of baptism. The high-priest, after prayer

__ to the gods, causes the water to flow over him on

all sides, according to the Egyptian ritual. Then
acius is led back to the temple, where he casts

himself at the feet of the goddess. The high-
priest secretly conndes to him cértain ineffable
words, and, openly, bids him to abstain, for ten
consecutive days, from the pleasures of the table,
eating nothing that has had life, and drinking no
wine.

After ten days spent in ascetic meditation,
Lucius is led back to the temple, ‘‘ with westward
sloping sun.”” The initiated welcome him with
various gifts;? then the uninitiated are dismissed.
The high-priest clothes Lucius in a linen robe and
takes him to the very heart of the sanctuary.
Here Apuleius breaks off, leaving our curiosity
unsatisfied :

«This word is used in the Ptolemaic papyri and is applied to
the recluses of the Serapeum who receive initiation (Reitzen-
stein, loc. cit., p. 77).

2Reitzenstein suggests that the neophyte receives offerings
because baptism has already made hima god.

Anew enh

ENC id
*(aUIDULOd SST (T ‘YOUDL) 720)
UT [asso OY} ‘asso A-PHpAPH 9yy Sursr1eg sonbeis]

-rapyutidg oy} puv ysvoig S,UeUIOM & JO UO OU}

The Mysteries of Isis 179

Perchance, eager reader, thou burnest to know what
then was said, what done. I would tell thee, were it
lawful for me to tell, and thou shouldst know all, were
it lawful for thee to hear. But both tongue and ear
would be infected with like guilt, did I gratify such rash
curiosity. Yet since, perchance, it is pious craving
that vexes thee, I will not torment thee by prolonga-
tion of thy anguish. Hear, then, and believe, for
what I tell is true. I drew nigh to the confines of
death. I trod the threshold of Proserpine, I was
borne through all the elements and returned to earth
again. I saw the sun gleaming with bright splendour
at dead of night; I approached the gods above and the
gods below, and worshipped them face to face. Be-
hold, I have told thee things of which, though thou
hast heard them, thou must yet know naught.*

At break of day, Lucius, who has put on and
taken off in succession twelve different robes,
now arrayed in a cloak embroidered with figures
of beasts, bearing in his hand a flaming torch,
wearing a crown of white palm leaves, which
radiate from his head like the sun, is led to a
wooden dais in front of the statue of the goddess.
The people throng in all the spaces around the
shrine. Suddenly, the curtains are drawn aside
and he appears in the garb and attitude that
symbolise the sun.

This “birthday of his initiation”’ is celebrated

1 Metamorphoses, xi, 23. H. E. Butler’s translation.

180 Kings and Gods of Egypt

by three days of festival and banqueting; Lucius
still remains in the temple, enjoying ineffable
ecstasy in the contemplation of the goddess. At
length he withdraws, after having sung to the
goddess a litany of rhythmic verses,’ and having
offered to the high-priest gifts and kisses. Later,
Lucius undergoes further initiations; he is admitted
to the mysteries of Osiris, to the nocturnal orgies
of Serapis, and thus receives three successive reve-
lations. Finally, he is chosen to be one of the
Pastophori, and, not without pride, he now shows
his tonsured head in all the processions of Isis,
performing the duties ‘“‘of that most ancient
company of priests, established in the great days
of Sylla.”’?

Is it possible for us to arrive at some idea of
what Apuleius was unable to reveal to the profane
reader: the Mysteries of the Holy Vigil? Apuleius
states that the neophyte was invited to hear and
to see secret things. In the Mysteries of Eleusis,
also, the aspirants to initiation witnessed dramatic
scenes, looked on pictures, or listened to revela-

tLafaye has succeeded in arranging in verse the rhythmical
prose of this passage of Apuleius which strongly recalls the
litanies which in later times were composed in honour of the
Virgin (p. 138).

2 Metamorphoses, xi, 30. H. E. Butler’s translation.

The Mysteries of Isis 181

tions.' Then, Apuleius saw, perhaps he himself
assisted in a few scenes chosen from a sacred
drama, or a mystery; what he heard was the ex-
planation of these scenes and the revelation of
their symbolic meaning.

Apuleius names the successive episodes of this
dramawithout describing them: baptism, death, and
rebirth; descent into Hell; transfiguration into the
Sun. He thus gives us, as it were, an argument,
or a heading to sum upeach scene. Fortunately,
these headings refer to rites which are clearly
Egyptian. So, calling to my aid certain hiero-
glyphic evidence, I shall try to supply the text
missing between the headings.

The neophyte receives at first a baptism which

t Paul Foucart (Mystéres d’Eleusis, p- 45) has established that
\ the Eleusinian Mysteries included: (1) processions; (2) exhibitions
\ of pictures or dramatic scenes; (3) oral explanation. I find that
' the Isiac Mysteries move within the same frame.

2Clement of Alexandria uses this expression for the rites of
Eleusis, dpdua mvorixdy (Prostr., ii, p. 12, ed. Pot.) Also
Plutarch clearly states that in the Mysteries of Isis the sufferings
of Osiris were represented in mimic form and had a symbolic
meaning: ‘Isis would not that her own woes and grievous jour-
neyings, that the deeds of his wisdom and heroism should fall
into oblivion and silence. She instituted holy, sacred Mysteries
(rederal), which would afford an image, a representation in mimic
scenes of the sufferings he endured (eixdvas Kal bmrovolas Kal ulunua
rov rére Tadnudrwr), that they might serve as a pious teaching
and a consolatory hope to the men and women who passed
through the same hardships.”

182 Kings and Gods of Egypt

cleanses his body and his soul. The water, which
was supposed to come from the Nile, makes of him,
what it makes of every dead Egyptian who receives
the rite, the equal of Osiris. Like the god, he is
supposed to die to all things of the earth but to be
born again into a new life.t Baptism is called by
Tertullian, also, a symbol of death, and St. Paul
wrote: “‘ Know ye not, that so many of us as were
baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into his
death? Therefore, we are buried with him by
baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised
up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even
so we also should walk in newness of life.’’? The
apologist Firmicus Maternus, jeering at the Myste-
ries of Isis, sets this baptism over against that of the
Christians: ‘In vain deemest thou that this water
worshipped by thee, can save thee. It is another
water which makes men to be born anew.’’ The
controversy is valuable to us, for it teaches us what
the Christians denied to the Isiac baptism, and
what the Isiacs expected fromit..

After baptism, the neophyte now identified with

«Cf. Junker, Die Stundenwachen in den Osirismysterien, pp.
67-102. 2 Romans vi, 3, 4.

3 De errone prof. relig., 2, 5: ‘ Frustra tibi hanc aquam, quam
colis, putas aliquando prodesse. Alia est aqua, qua renovatt homines
renascuntur.” Cf. Tertullian, De prescriptione heretic., xli.

The Mysteries of Isis 183

Osiris, has to take part in a representation of his
own death and resurrection. The priest says to
Lucius that ‘‘the very act of dedication is a

voluntary death and an imperilling of life’; and
Lucius adds: “‘Ldrew nigh to the co confines of death. +
What kind of death? It cannot mean the punish-

9 SS SS ea ee
ment incurred in ancient times by any man who

in order to satisfy a sacrilegious curiosity tries to
see the gods. Lucius, called by. Isis, has nothing
to fear from her. The death which awaits him is
purely symbolic; it is the ritual death of the Egypt-
ian worship. Only those who have been muti-
lated like Osiris, and who have received the rites
invented by Isis can enjoy the bliss of a second
life.

I presume, therefore, that the high-priest led the
novice to a dark chamber, staged and arranged in
conformity with the customary externals of funeral

ER TA A

scenes. There, the neophyte had to gaze upon
paintings or bas-reliefs, or living pictures setting
forth the death of Osiris, the dismemberment of
his corpse, and the reconstitution of his body; upon
the magic rites performed by Isis and Nephthys,
assisted by Thot and Anubis; finally upon the
resurrection of Osiris and his fusion with the Sun
Ra. So far, there is nothing with which the postu-
lant would not be perfectly familiar. The factor

184 Kings and Gods of Egypt

that made these scenes new, conferring upon them
the character of a revelation, was the commen-
tary of the priest. He set forth the ethical and
practical value of these rites when applied to
individual man. Osiris had called all men of
“good will” to become his liegemen, to share the
benefit of his passion; the powerful rites which had
delivered him from the bonds of death would also,
if correctly applied, deliver all men from physical
death. Once identified with Osiris, the postulant
had therefore to be mutilated as the god had been,
in order to obtain salvation. After having seen
and heard, he agreed in an outburst of faith, to
accept all the consequences of his initiation. How
far the Osirian death was actualised on his own
body, it is difficult to guess. Is it possible to
imagine that the neophyte lay upon a funeral
couch, undergoing the simulation of mutilation
without apprehension? In Egypt, these rites were
performed not only upon the statues of the gods
and upon human mummies, but also upon the very
person of the living King. When Pharaoh was
adored, as god, in the temple, it was supposed that
his perishable body had undergone ritual death,
had been dismembered and reconstituted, in order
that it might be endowed with divine life. Egypt
thus offered two examples of the application of

The Mysteries of Isis 185

Osirian death to men; the cult of the dead and the
cult of the Pharaoh during his life.t It was Isis
who devised ‘‘that remedy that gives immortality”’ ;
therefore, the initiated to the Isiac mysteries
received, in their lifetime, the promises of a future
bliss, but upon the condition that they should
undergo Osirian death, or, at least, an imitation of
it. This test made the postulant not only an equal
of Osiris, but a new Osiris; even as the god would
live eternally,? so would the initiate live eternally
after his death. And even as in Egypt, any dead
man, consecrated by the rites, usually assumes the
name and appears in the rdle and garb of Osiris,
even so did the Isiac initiate cause himself to be
portrayed in the garb and with the attributes of
Serapis. 3 "
ngrue® SY

The novice, after passing through the gates of
death ‘‘was reborn’”’ and henceforth counted the
day of his initiation as the first of his real life.

A. Moret; re religieux de la royaulé pharaonique,
Deelye

2 In the Phrygian Mysteries in which Attis plays the same part
that Osiris does in the Isiac rites, the people sang: “ Have con-
fidence, O mysts! for the god is saved and salvation will also

spring for you from out your misery.” with Paul's Epistle to
the Romans vi., 5: “If we have beGa_planted Ypgether inthe
likeness.of bis death we shall be also in RETF S Ot ee

tion.” The Egyptian formula occurs in Fyr. of Ounas, |. 240.
3F, Cumont, l. c., p. 278, note 76.

186 Kings and Gods of Egypt

How was this rebirth actualised? The neophyte
put on a shining garment, bright as the day, to
resemble the resurrected Osiris.t The raiment
symbolised his ‘“‘glorious’’ body issuing from its
mortal coil. Was there no allegory behind? Let
us go back to those sacred books in Egyptian
script, from which Lucius received his instruction.

What knowledge did they impart? Probably
this: In Egypt, in order to represent gestation
and rebirth, either a statue or the mummy of the ©
deceased was placed inside the hide of a sacrificed
animal or inside a wooden cow; or, a priest would
lay himself down within the hide on the night of
the funeral, as a substitute for the dead man.?
Next morning, the priest was considered to issue
from the skin as from a womb. Mythology
coming to the aid of magic, the deceased became
identified with the Sun R&a, born under the form
of a calf from the cow Nouit, who was goddess of
Heaven.’ Both Plutarch (52) and Apuleius
mention the wooden image of a cow, which was
borne upon the priest’s shoulders in the procession

eer NTT Re a

——__

* De Iside et Osiride, 78; Metamorphoses, xi, 29.

? Herodotus, ii, 129, 132. Diodorus, i, 85. Cf. V. Loret,
Les fétes d’ Osiris au mois de Choiak, ap. Recueil, iv, p- 26. See
also what has been written above, p. 86.

3A. Moret, Du caractére religieux de la royauté pharaonique, p,
PNyfry sal, 1h 4 (xi, 10.)

The Mysteries of Isis 187

of Isis. _Did the wooden cow mean for the Isiacs

what it meant for : wom
from which the dead are born anew? Judging
rom the episode of Aristzus in the Georgics,* the

Romans were acquainted with the rite of the hide.
Virgil gives to the bee-breeders a recipe which will
bring about spontaneous generation of bees. By
the action of magic rites, a swarm can be brought
into existence within the hides of sacrificed bulls.
‘This miraculous process, as the Latin writers
knew,? was derived from Egyptian and Orphic
traditions. On the other hand, the Egyptians
were familiar also with the idea that the soul
issued from the skin of victims under the form of
a bee.’ Was this tradition, which Virgil presents
in a popular form, propounded to the neophyte
with its mystic significance? At any rate, the
presence on the walls of the megarum of a bee and
a foetus surrounded with ears of corn suggests
that those symbols were in some way or other

employed to illustrate the mysteries of new birth. 4
A SSCS
1 Georgics, iv, 281 and 556.
2Commentary of Servius on the Georgics, iii, 364: “ Haec
. ex Algyptiis tracta sunt sacris.”
3Tomb of Seti I, ed. Lefébure, part 3, Pl. 3, 1. 48. Cf.
Lefébure, L’office des morts a Abydos, and Ph. Virey, Quelques ob-
servations sur l épisode d’ Aristée, 1889.
4 The worship of Mithra has also a rite of rebirth called tauro-
bolium: the myst outstretched in a pit, simulating the tomb,

5 TEI EC a ED,

188 Kings and Gods of Egypt

After the funeral rites are accomplished, the
neophyte is said ‘“‘to tread the threshold of
Proserpina’’ (calcato Proserpine limine). In
other words, he descends into Hell.. The theme,

probably derived from the Egyptians,’ had been

familiar to all since the time of Homer and Virgil.
In the Orphic rites, inspired by Egypt, the initiate
receives a holy book which shall teach him the
right ways to Hades. In the Eleusinian Mysteries,
the descent into Hell, after the ceremony of ritual
death, is made amid surroundings which conjure
up alternately the fearful depths of Hades or the

pleasant stretches of theEtysian Fields.

Se ee

The soul at the moment of death experiences the
same sensations as those experience who are initiated
into great’ mysteries. Word and thing are alike:
we Say teAcutay (to die) and teAsiobat (to be initiated).
There are, at first, steps to be taken at random,
painful wanderings astray from the right path,
anxious and unavailing journeys through the dark-
ness. Then, before the end, the crisis of fear, the
shudder, the shiver, the cold sweat, the terror. But

Mea LES : Sete eaks upon the eyes;

receives gory baptism from a bleeding bull slaughtered above his
head; he exposes his face and all the parts of his body to the stream-
ing blood and even drinks of it. The myst is said to be born
anew from this baptism of blood, to be purified from his sins for
an eternal life, in eternum renatus. Cf. Cumont, I. c., Dp. 100.
‘Suetonius (Caligula, 57) states that even in the theatre the
descent into Hell was produced on the stage by Egyptian actors.
rn te ed

The Mysteries of Isis 189

the soul enters into pure regions, and meadows echoing
with the sound of voices and of dances; sacred utter-
ances, divine apparitions inspire the soul with awe.

Was the descent into Hell in the Holy Vigil
interpreted in the same way as by the Egyptian?
Was the neophyte, like the Egyptian dead, called
before an Osirian tribunal, and was his conscience
weighed in the balance against Justice and Truth?
The texts suggest no answer, but the tribunal in
the Nether World was a theme often treated by
the Roman poets, especially Virgil, Horace, and
Ovid. It must also have been familiar to the
Isiacs, be it only through the Roman channel.
Besides, the megarum of Pompeii affords, in favour
of this hypothesis, a valuable testimony: the
presence, among the plaster reliefs found there, of
the ‘‘Devourer,” the Egyptian monster, which
devours the guilty cast out by the Osirian Justice.
May we not infer that the tribunal of Osiris was
one of the scenes or pictures shown to the initiate?
As to the secrets confided to him by the priest,
they were perhaps the powerful formule which
facilitated the deceased Egyptian in his justifi-
cation.2 Furthermore, the ethical standard of
the worshippers of Isis, according to Plutarch and

t See above p. 130.
2Cf. In the Time of the Pharaohs, Ch. ‘Book of the Dead.”

190 Kings and Gods of Egypt

Apuleius, their observance of a temperate life,
their love of fair dealing, their thirst for truth, are
all merits likewise advanced by the deceased
Egyptian as claims to a favourable verdict from
the Osirian tribunal.

The neophyte, exalted by ten days of fasting
and meditation, was probably less sensitive to the
puerile mimicry or the conventional stagery of the
rites, than amazed and impressed by the sublime
significance of the Osirian death, instrument of
redemption, promise of immortality. Besides, the
surroundings now become more cheerful. Leav-
ing the dismal crypt, where he had experienced
the pangs of death, he was introduced to another
chamber, where Isis, clad in white raiment,
sparkling with jewels, welcomed him maternally.
Suddenly a disc of beaming rays illuminated the
room. Lucius “saw at dead of night the sun
glowing with splendour~*—Tt is indeed in the
bosom of the Sun Ra, in the Solar Barge that the
Egyptians located their supreme Paradise.?

*Firmicus says to an Isiac: “Thou shalt not be reclaimed by
the splendour of the light shown to thee” (Nec ostensi tibi
luminis splendore corrigeris). Also in the Mysteries of Eleusis we
find this somewhat clap-trap device of an outburst of light in the
midst of darkness (cf. P. Foucart, J. /., p- 58).

? How the Isiacs conceived of Paradise is not yet ascertained.

However there is a wish often expressed in their funerali stela:
“May Osiris grant refreshing water to thy thirsty soul,” which

The Mysteries of Isis rey

Osiris himself, united with the sun, became one
with the star whose daily death and rebirth are
another symbol of human destiny. At this stage
of the initiation, the neophyte, first identified with
Osiris, then with RA, “‘was borne through all the
elements and approached the gods above and the
gods below.’’ So did the blessed Egyptian, who
in the other world “adored the morning sun, the
moon, the air, the water, and fire.”"* Perhaps the
initiate was shown, from the Sacred Books, the
journeyings of the Solar Barge; perhaps he was
supposed to wander through the twelve Elysian
regions that correspond to the twelve hours of the
night. This would explain the twelve sacerdotal
robes that he puts on during the course of his
initiation. We learn from Porphyrius that ‘the
souls in passing through the spheres of the planets
put on, like successive tunics, the qualities of those
"2 Be that as it may, the neophyte, his
initiation over, is supposed to be absorbed into the
Sun RA as was Osiris, as were all the Egyptian

stars.

certainly is derived from an Egyptian formula: “To drink from
the waters of the flowing Nile,”’ one of the joys of the elect in the
Egyptian Paradise (cf. Lafaye, l. c., p. 96; Cumont, /. c., p.
437)-

«Formule in the Rhind papyrus (Brugsch, Die Aegyptologie,
p. 191).

2 De abstinentia, i, 31.

192 Kings and Gods of Egypt

dead; when he reappears before the people, his
head is crowned with a halo of rays, like unto the
Sun Ra (ad instar Solis).

No doubt, after the ecstasy of the sublime reve-
lations, during which he has thrown off his mortal
coil, and body of humiliation, the initiate, on his
return to his daily human life will find temptations
and sorrows awaiting him, and will experience
relapses. But he “carries in his soul as van
basket, the pure doctrines’? which fortify him
against discouragement; he possesses a system of
belief, which, as Plutarch puts it, helps him to
conform to the laws and to understand the anti-
nomies of our universe. What is Osiris, if not the
personification of the good in nature, the supreme
intelligence? In a word, Osiris is Good. Seth-
Typhon, opposed to him, like drought to moisture,
like passion and violence to harmony and justice,
is Evil. Between the two, there is an eternal con-
flict, played out in the heart of man, but the two
are necessary, because each is the complement of
the other. Without Evil, Good would not have
manifested itself. As for Isis, the feminine

"To describe the death of Pharaoh, the Egyptian texts say:
“The King soars to Heaven and assumes the shape of the solar

disc while his limbs are absorbed in the matter of which he was
created” (Louvre Papyrus, pp. 19, 41, 47).

The Mysteries of Isis 193

principle, the universal womb, she is the experi-
mental soil to be fertilised either by Good or Evil.
Doubtless, she hates Evil and loves Good with an
inherent love, but though she loves, saves, and
resuscitates Osiris, she does not kill Typhon, for
she knows that it is Evil that has brought about
the beneficent death of the ‘‘Good Being.’”’* In
the Osirian drama, Good is victorious only because
Evil has compelled it to assert itself. Thus man
is ever divided between calls, that of his lower
instinct, and that of his moral conscience. Like
Osiris, he shall triumph if he has trust in the noble
inspirations of Isis. Then he will understand that
“‘to know the gods by their revelations is to possess
the truth,’ and that ‘‘the most acceptable sacri-
fice to be offered to the gods is a conscience clear
and just, as far from superstition as from athe-
ism.’’?. ‘‘To approach nearer and nearer to truth
and wisdom,” is then, according to Plutarch, what
the goddess invites us to seek in ourselves and in
her, by the observance of her rites.

But the initiate left the temple with another
benefit, more direct and practical, the promise of
which Lucius receives from the mouth of the
goddess:

De Iside et Osiride, 40, 49. 2 [bid., 1, 2, 11.
13

194 Kings and Gods of Egypt

Thou shalt live blessed, thou shalt live crowned
with glory beneath my protection, and when thy life
istun and thou goest down to the Nether World,
there also, in that nether atmosphere, thou shalt see
me shining in the inmost halls of Styx; and thou
shalt dwell in the Elysian Fields, and continually
make offering of worship to me, and I will smile upon
thee. Nay, if by sedulous observance and religious
service and persistent chastity thou bear thee worthy
of my godhead, thou shalt know that I alone have
power to prolong thy life beyond the space ordained
by fate.? :

In times past, the Egyptian devotees had aspired
to the same bliss: ‘‘To come forth after a very
happy and prolonged old age among the liegemen
of Osiris.”’ But the prospect of a long life on earth
became desirable only because the initiate now
knew the meaning of this life and no longer feared
death. Cicero thus expresses his faith in the
Mysteries: ‘‘We at last possess reasons why we
should live, and we are not only eager to live,
but we cherish a better hope in death.”? The
same sentiment is found in the inscription of
an Eleusinian initiate: ‘“‘Behold! it is a fair
mystery that comes unto us from the Blessed;
for mortals, death is no more an evil, but a

' Metamorphoses, xi, 6. H. E. Butler’s translation.
2 Cicero, De legibus, ii, 14.

I. High Priest Offering the Holy Water to
the Isiaques.

II. Pantomime in the Isiaque Cult.

(Fresques d’Herculaneum.—E. Guimet, L’Isis
romaine).

Plate XVI.

- The Mysteries of Isis 195

/

bliss.”"* This peace of the soul, the supreme boon
of the Isiac initiation, is also expressed in a phrase
often found on the tombs of the initiated: ‘‘Have
faith in Osiris!”

Despite its shortcomings and some obscurity
in its symbols, the worship of Isis succeeded in
holding its ground in the Roman world for a period
of five hundred years. The Christian faith, in its
infancy, had no better equipped rival. ‘The

’

whole world now swears by Serapis,’”’ exclaimed
Tertullian indignantly. In fact, with its priest-
hood, white-robed, tonsured, of ascetic life; its
congregation of believers, its monks and nuns; its
ceremonies of baptism and communion; its doc-
trines of salvation and redemption; its preachings
from the pulpit, its daily services in the temple; its
habits of contemplation and ecstatic adoration; its
yearning for truth and justice,—the cult of Isis
appears as a sort of pre-Christianity. On certain

points, the resemblance was such indeed that the

t Plutarch (Immortality of the Soul) says: ‘Then the initiate,
made perfect and free, walks without constraint and celebrates
the Mysteries with a crown on his head. He lives with men who
are pure and sanctified; he looks beneath him upon the earth,
upon the crowd of the folk who are not initiated and purified and
who throng to the mud-pit and flounder in the darkness, and
through fear of death cling to their woes, not trusting in the bliss
of the hereafter.”

196 Kings and Gods of Egypt

Fathers regarded it as a kind of parody: “May
not the devil in the mysteries of the idols counter-
feit things of our divine faith? He also baptises
those who believe in him, and promises that they
shall come forth, cleansed of their sins.’’?

At any rate, it is through the channel of the
Mysteries of Isis that the speculations of Ancient
Egypt have spread over the Roman world, but
the evolution from Egyptian thought to Isiac
doctrines marks a progress. At the beginning,
the sacrifice of the god in Egypt was involuntary
and its redemptory effects upon mankind were
unconscious. It is the force of a purely magic
rite that resuscitates Osiris, and it is as a conse-
quence of a magic axiom, “Like produces like,”
that the men who imitate the death of Osiris par-
take automatically in his rebirth and immortality.
As we advance in Egyptian civilisation, the sacri-
fice of the god develops more and more into a
self-conscious act, in the supreme altruism of the
“Good Being.’”’? At the epoch of the Mysteries
of Isis, the evolution in the spiritualistic direction
is quite completed; it is Isis herself who calls the
neophyte (Lucius styles himself vocatus), who
entreats him to follow the way of Osiris, who leads
him on the road to salvation. The Isiac baptism

tTertullian, De presc. hereticorum, xli. 2 See ante, p. 98.

. The Mysteries of Isis 197

is for the cleansing of the soul rather than of the
body; the death of the neophyte typifies the death
of the soul unto sin; the rebirth is the starting-point
for a purer and higher life; the outburst of light
in the darkness symbolises the illumination of
the mind by the revealed truths; the transfigura-
tion of the initiate into the god RA is the apotheosis
of man, who knowing God, himself becomes divine.
The Isiac creed appealed forcibly to men by its
direct call to the individual. The Roman religion,
cold and formal, a State sacerdotal office, associat-
ing man with God only through the intermediary
of the priest, had failed to touch the hearts, stir
imagination, or move the depths of enthusiasm.
The votary of Isis, wrapt in ecstasy at the feet of
the goddess, interpreted the revelation not in the
word, but in the spirit, according to the need of
his heart, in the glow of his faith. From that day
Mysticism has lived. The Isiac became his own
priest; the god, no longer a far-distant entity, a
remote State providence, deigns to converse with
him, becomes his tutelary friend, and, as it were,
“a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.’’ Each
man ‘“‘possesses”’ the God who is father of all,
and keeps his law in doing good in his own way.
These Isiac mystics are at the same time ascetics.
To know God, man must live soberly, chastely,

198 Kings and Gods of Egypt

and die to the things of this world. Greek philo-
sophy, on the contrary, taught man “‘to live his
life’ (carpe diem), and to seek the supreme good on
this earth by the light of reason, wisdom, righteous-
ness. The Oriental mysteries may also have con-
ferred upon Cicero and other initiates an eagerness
to live to relish all the joys of life. Isis promises
to Lucius that he shall enjoy a lengthy earthly
happiness. But supreme happiness is a boon of
the next world; it is the hope held out to the ini-
tiated, as, later, to the Christians. By the in-
fluence of Eastern religions, a new character is
imparted to the aspirations of men. Life is
desirable, yet, in the confines of this perishable
body, it is only a preparation, a stage upon the
road to death.t Man has vanquished for ever his
terror of the unknown. One step further, and
he will despise all earthly joys, his eyes fixed upon
the vision of eternal bliss promised by Christ!

« Cf. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 2. ‘‘Isis communicates her
holy creed to those who by their perseverance in a temperate life,
withdrawing themselves from the pleasures of the senses and from
the passions, yearn to participate in the divine nature; who
observe sedulously in the temples severe rules and rigorous absti-
nence, that they may know the Supreme and Sovereign Being
whom the Spirit alone can understand, whom the goddess invites
us to seek in herself, as in the sanctuary where he abides.”

CHAPTER VI

SoME LEGENDARY TRAVELS OF THE EGYPTIANS
IN ASIA

BEyoND the State documents, accounts of
campaigns, annals of the reigns of the Pharaohs,
lists of conquests, and treaties of peace, which
afford us, if not an insight, at least a glimpse
into the history of the political and military
intercourse between Egypt and Asia, we possess
other Egyptian material. It consists of legends
and anecdotes of a purely imaginative character,
unreliable for the historian, but valuable in that
it reveals how the Egyptians pictured to them-
selves the regions of Asia bordering their own
country. These texts take the form of bioyraphi-
cal inscriptions, popular tales, and rhetorical
exercises, and do not claim to give any accurate
information concerning chronology, or geography.
But to him who wishes to know the life and primi-
tive customs of the countries explored by the
Egyptians, as well as the point of view taken by

199

200 Kings and Gods of Egypt

the Egyptian explorer, even such descriptions,
fantastic though they be, will afford a few precious
guides and provide a pleasing relief to the bare
statements of official history.

The oldest account of this kind with which we
are acquainted is entitled The Adventures of Sin-
ouhit.*

About 2000 B.c., during the reign of Amenem-
hait I, a great Egyptian lord left the court secretly,
for reasons that are not made clear, and took
refuge beyond the Asiatic frontier in a country
called Kedem, situated in the Upper Tonou.
There, Sinouhit was heartily welcomed by the
Prince of Tonou, Ammouianashi, who said to him,
“Thou shalt feel at home in my land, for thou wilt
hear tl.e speech of Egypt.”” Not that the country
was colonised by Egyptians, but it gave shelter toa
certain number of refugees, like Sinouhit himself.
The interest of the story for us lies in the descrip-
tion given by the Egyptian nobleman of the
country in which he settled, and of its customs.

The Lord of Tonou gave me his eldest daughter in
marriage and he granted that I should choose for
myself, in his country, a portion from the best land he
possessed on the frontier of a neighbouring state.

« Berlin Papyrus, No 1.

_ Travels of Egyptians in Asia 201

The land is excellent; Asiaisitsname. Figs and grapes
grow therein; wine is more abundant than water;
there is honey in plenty, oil in great quantity, and all
kinds of fruit are on the trees; barley and wheat grow
there beyond measure, and there is every kind of
cattle. And the prince of the land honoured me,
making me a prince over one of the best tribes in his
dominions. I had bread for every meal and wine
every day, boiled meat and roasted poultry, also the
game that was caught for me or presented to me,
besides that which was chased by my own hounds.
Dishes in plenty were prepared for me and I had milk
cooked in all sorts of ways.

I passed many years there; my children became
mighty, each one lord of his own tribe. The messen-
ger who went down to the north or who came up to the
south toward Egypt was eager to visit me, for I
welcomed everybody. ... The Bedouins (Satiow),
who set out upon far-off expeditions to fight and to
conquer the alien princes, were under my command,
for the prince of Tonou appointed me general of his
soldiers for many years. . .

A mighty man of Tonou came to defy me in my
tent; . . . he declared that he would seize my cattle
at the instigation of his tribe... . I spent the night
in stringing my bow, arranging my arrows, sharpening
my sword, and furbishing my weapons. At daybreak,
all the people of Tonou thronged around me;. .
all hearts burned for me, men and women uttered
cries, every heart was fearful for me, and they said,
“Is there verily another mighty man who dare fight
against him?” He took his shield, his battle-axe, his
armful of javelins. When I had made him use all his
spears and had dodged his arrows so that they struck

202 Kings and Gods of Egypt

the earth far and wide, he rushed upon me; then I
drew my bow upon him, and when my arrow entered
his neck, he uttered a great cry and he fell upon the
ground. Idespatched him with hisownaxe. Istood
upon his back and sent up my cry of victory and all

the Asiatics shouted for joy ... and the prince
Ammouianashi embraced me, and I seized the
possessions of the slain. . . .7

The remainder of the story is not concerned
with Asia. Sinouhit, reinstated in the favour
of Pharaoh, returns to Egypt. His vivid descrip-
tions of the pastoral and warlike life of the people
of Tonou,? of the political organisation of the land
under the rule of petty chieftains of clans owing
allegiance to a paramount chief, would have a still
greater interest for us, if we could only locate the
district with accuracy. We find applied to those
localities, names, which in the Bible, designate men;
thus, the Ajah of Genesis, 3 a nephew of Lotan.‘4

The name Tonou, according to Max Miiller, R.
Weill, and Isidore Lévy,’ would be an abbreviated
form of Lotan, Lotanou. The region here de-
scribed would therefore be the land stretching

*Trans.: G. Maspero, Les Contes populaires de l Egypte
ancienne. ;

* The land of Tonou is in later documents called by the Egypt-
ians Retonou, Lotenou, Lotanou. 3 Genesis xxxvi, 24.

4Genesis xxxvi, 20. G. Maspero, Les Mémoires de Sinouhit,
1908, p. 45.

5 Sphinx, t. viii, p. 214; t. ix, pp. 10, 72.

’ Travels of Egyptians in Asia 203

between the Dead Sea and the Desert of Sinai,
a view that seems to be supported by a statement
on an Official stela in Sinai, dated from Amenem-
hait III, which refers to a connection between
Egypt and the brother of a chieftain of Lotanou.'

But a recent discovery has challenged this
identification. In a bundle of papyri found by
M. Quibell in the Ramesseum, there has come to
light another manuscript of our story, and Mr.
Alan H. Gardiner has established the reading in
it of a very important name, illegible in the Berlin
papyrus; this is the name of Kepni-Gebli-Gebcl,
which is another name for Byblos on the Syrian
coast. Hence, it is around Byblos that the scenes
of pastoral life, described by Sinouhit, should be
placed. If that is so, we must conclude according
to Gardiner, that Palestine, at the time of the
XIIth dynasty was still undeveloped, since the
mainland away from the coast had no towns and
the inhabitants still led a pastoral and nomadic life.
Hence arises another objection. According to the
chronology adopted by the Berlin school, the XIIth
Egyptian dynasty would be separated from the
XVIIIth by an interval of only two hundred years.

©R. Weill, ap. Sphinx, t. ix, pp. 9, 67.
2 Alan H. Gardiner, Eine neue Handschrift der Sinuhegeschichte
(Ber. Berlin. Akad., 7 Feb., 1907).

204. Kings and Gods of Egypt

But during the XVIIIth dynasty (about 1600
B.C.,) as is clearly evidenced by the letters found at
E]-Amarna, * there existed in Palestine a municipal
system of government. Such an evolution and
total change of policy could hardly have been
brought about and developed in the short space
of two centuries.

I cannot enter here upon the discussion of all
the various problems put forward by the adven-
tures of Sinouhit. Let it be briefly added that ina
recent edition of the text, Maspero disputes the
reading of Kepni and returns to his previous
conclusions in favour of a country near Sinai.”

Yet it must be pointed out that the Egyptians, at
the time of Amenemhait I were perfectly familiar
with Byblos, for it appears from a recent discovery
that mention was made of an Egyptian expedition
to Byblos,’ under the Ancient Empire, that is,
centuries before the time when Sinouhit set out
upon his adventurous journey.

. A. Moret, In the Time of the Pharaohs, Ch. II: Pharaonic
Diplomacy.

2R. Weill suggests that Kepni, Gebel, retains here its wide
geographical meaning, ‘‘the mountains” (Sphinx, xi, p. 204).
Gardiner holds his own ground (Die Erzdhlung des Sinuhe, 1909,
p. 10), supported by Ed. Meyer (Geschichte, i, 2d ed., p. 396).

3Sethe et Gardiner, ap. Zeitschift fiir egyptische Sprache,
xlv, p. 10. For mention of Byblos in the Egyptian texts of the
XIIth dynasty, see Erman, A. Z., xlii, p. 60.

Travels of Egyptians in Asia 205

After Thotmes I, about 1550 B.c., had conquered
Syria, the valley of the Jordan, and the land
beyond as far as the banks of the Euphrates, the
Egyptians held sway, for many centuries, over
these regions of Lotanou and Kharou. But their
curiosity and interest seem to have carried them
to still more distant lands which made an appeal
to their imaginations. The spectacle of the Eu-
phrates astonishes them. ‘‘Its waters turned back

’

go down-stream in going up-stream,” says Thot-
mes I, in the stela of Tombos.* They speak with
awe of the forests of Lebanon where the noble
Sennofri, a favourite of Thotmes III, pitched his
tent at an altitude that seemed fabulous to the in-
habitants of the Nile valley—‘‘ above the clouds”’;
penetrated into the forest and brought back to
Byblos choice trunks of the cedar-trees, sixty
Egyptian cubits (about 34 yards) in length, and as
thick at one end as at the other. At Byblos, the
cedars were packed upon ships and sent down into
Egypt. The conquerors of these far-off provinces
seize the opportunity to relate to us their own
achievements in the chase and in warfare. Amen-
emheb, one of the officers of Thotmes III has

: Stele of Tombos, 1. 13 (Lepsius, Denkmédler, iii, 5, a). - For
the Egyptian on the Nile, north was down-stream, and south
up-stream. Hence their surprise when they saw that on the
Euphrates one went south in going down-stream.

206 Kings and Gods of Egypt

engraved his exploits on the walls of his tomb.
In the country of Nii, he “‘slew one hundred and
twenty elephants in order to take their tusks.”’
“The largest of the elephants had charged His
Majesty; I cut off his trunk [literally his hand]
while he stood alive before His Majesty.’’ At the
siege of Qadesh, the enemy sent a mare in rut
amongst the stallions of the Egyptian chariots, to
disarray their ranks. Amenemheb sprang from his’
chariot, rushed upon the mare, ripped her up with
his sword, cut off her tail, and brought it back to
the King asa trophy. Such feats won their reward.
The son of Thotmes III, Amenophis IT, one day,
while holding a review, called Amenemheb from
the ranks: “I know thy courage,” he said to him;
“thou shalt have the command of my chosen
troops.”

Such picturesque material as warlike deeds,
hunting exploits, wild country, dark forests, was
likely to appeal to the popular imagination. A
mass of legend was built up at that time, but few
of the many tales have come down to us. They
have all the same adventurous character and
relate at length the heroic doings of the Egyptians
in Asia, but say very little concerning the country
itself and the inhabitants thereof—the very points
on which we desire information. We hear, for

‘Travels of Egyptians in Asia 207

example, how, in the time of Thotmes ITI, a certain
Thoutii, general of the infantry,’ captured, by
stratagem, a rebel chief of Jaffa and felled him
with the great staff of Pharaoh;’ the account may
have been gratifying—to the Egyptians—but we
would like to learn a little more about Jaffa and
the surrounding country. The story does contain
a morsel of historical information, but when we
come to the tale of the ‘‘Predestined Prince,’’ we
are in the heart of the land of fable.

In the land of Naharaina, the region of the upper
Euphrates, there is a mysterious town, where in
a palace, pierced with seventy windows, rising
seventy cubits above the earth, the prince’s
daughter is hidden away. He alone will be her
husband who can fly from the ground and reach
her. It is the son of Pharaoh, the predestined
Prince, who at one bound reaches the window and
falls into the arms of the enamoured princess, to
the great chagrin of the Syrian princes who have
tried in vain daily to wing their flight thus high.?

Again, we enter further into the realm of the
fantastic in the story of the Princess of Bakhtan.
Weare stillin Naharaina. The prince of Bakhtan,

* Maspero’s Popular Tales, 3d ed., p. 92.
2 Harris Papyrus, 500.

208 Kings and Gods of Egypt

who has given his eldest daughter in marriage to
the Pharaoh, beseeches the aid of his mighty son-
in-law and ally to release his second daughter,
who resides with him, from the possession of an
evil spirit. Pharaoh sends magicians, who prove
of no avail. Thereupon, he dispatches from
Thebes, a statue of the god Khonsu. The god
performs a few magnetic passes and forthwith
the evil spirit comes out of the princess and departs
after it has been granted honourable terms of
capitulation.t Here, everything is legendary;
the subject-matter of the tale, the locality, and the
personality of the Pharaoh and of the prince.

Among all these accounts of imaginary travels
in Asia, one alone has any resemblance to a geo-
graphical romance. It has been translated by
Chabas under the title of The Travels of an Egypt-
wan.” Unfortunately, its text is very fragmentary
and difficult to understand. Its hero seems to
have been one of those Egyptian messengers, the
character and réle of whom have been quite clearly
designed for us in the letters from El-Amarna;
they journeyed from town to town as mediators,
as protectors, sometimes as judges, in order to
enforce the authority of the Pharaoh in the distant

1 Stéle in the Paris National Library.
2 Papyrus Anastasi I.

Travels of Egyptians in Asia 209

parts of his dominions. The writer of the story
employs a literary artifice, which is not without its
parallels in our own day. He, himself, addresses
the hero as if recalling to him the travels and
events that have been experienced by him. The
writer emphasises the dangers which faced his
hero in the forests, on the mountainous shores
and the deserts which lay between the towns; he
mentions Byblos, the city of the goddess; Tyre,
where fish are greater in number than the grains of
sand and where drinking-water has to be brought
by boat from the main land. The most fully-
described episode is that of the arrival of the
messenger at Jaffa, by land, through a defile of the
mountains of the Levant:

Thou goest alone, without any escort in thy train,
and thou findest no mountaineer to put thee in the
way thou shouldest go; so terror lays hold upon thee,
thy hair rises on thy head, thy soul sinks into thy
sandals, for thy way is blocked by rocks and boulders;
there is no beaten track; hollies, thorns, aloes, dog-
shoes (prickly plants?), obstruct thy path; on one side
rises the precipice, on the other sinks the abyss.
Whilst thou travellest along, thy chariot jolts un-
ceasingly, thy team starts at every turn. At last,
wearied at heart, thou startest to gallop, but the sky
is cloudless; thou art thirsty, the enemy is behind

«See A. Moret, In the Time of the Pharaohs, Ch. II: Pharaonic
Diplomacy.
a

210 Kings and Gods of Egypt

thee, thou art affrighted, and when the bough of an
acacia lashes thee, thou dost dart aside, thy horse is
wounded, thou art thrown to the ground, and thou
art bruised.

But on entering Jaffa, thou comest to an orchard in
the full season of blossoming, thou makest a hole in the
hedge, thou goest in and thou dost eat; thou findest
there a fair maiden who keeps the orchards; she makes
friends with thee and gives thee the flower of her
breast. Thou art discovered, thou announcest who
thou art, and every one agrees that thou art a hero!

In brief, the travel tales, written during the
dynasty of the Ramses about 1300 B.C., picture
for us an imaginary Asia, vague, lacking local
colour, serving only as a setting for warlike adven-
tures or amorous enterprises. The description
of the customs or of the country is not a matter of
interest either for the writer or for the Egyptian
reader. The aim of the story is the gratification
of national pride in the celebration of the achieve-
ments of Pharaoh’s subjects.

The special literature of which we are treating
did not come to an end after the fall of the Egypt-
ian protectorate in Asia Minor. We have a
papyrus, in the Golenischeff collection, describing
the travels of an Egyptian in Phoenicia about the
eleventh century B.c. As may be expected, the
tone of the narrative and the bearing of the Egypt-

Travels of Egyptians in Asia 211

ian personages have greatly changed; we feel we
are in a time when the Pharaonic domination is
weakened and disputed. The hero is no longer a
predestined prince, or a captive princess, or a
powerful magician, or a valorous captain, or a
boastful messenger; he whom we meet in this last
document, hitherto unknown to us, is a simple
clerk engaged in business.

His name is Unamonu and he isa chief-keeper of
the hypostyle hall at Karnak. In the year 5 of
the reign of Ramses XII, about 1100 B.c., last of the
Ramses, when the high-priest of Amon, Herihor,
had seized the sceptre in the Thebaid, and Smen-
des, the first king of the Tanite dynasty, ruled the
Delta at Tanis, Unamonu embarked upon the
Syrian Seas to find wood to build a bark for Amon-
Ra. He touched at Dor, the city of the Zakkalas,
north of Jaffa, then at Tyre, and at Byblos, arriving
eventually in the country of Alasia, a land not yet
identified, though some recognise it as Cyprus,
while others place it at the mouth of the Orontes.

The voyage is full of events. Unamonu had
manned his ship with Syrians. At the port of Dor,
one of his sailors runs away, taking with him vases
and ingots of gold and silver, intended for the
princes ruling along the coast. He cannot obtain
justice either at Dor, or at Tyre, and when he

212 Kings and Gods of Egypt

arrives at Byblos, and the Prince Zerkarbaal hears
that he has brought no presents, an order is issued
that he must leave the port. But the gods
immediately express their displeasure. As the
Prince of Byblos was sacrificing in the temple,
the gods seized one of the favourite courtiers and
made him dance till he fell into a condition of
frenzy and prophecy that lasted all day and all
night. The Egyptian was called upon to deliver
him from this possession and came, bringing with
him a statue of Amon, reserved for foreign expedi-
tions and therefore called ‘‘Amon of the Ways.”
The statue probably played the same part as the
statue of Khonsu in the tale of the Princess of
Bakhtan; the magic intervention was successful,
then they turned to business.

Unamonu was led to the palace and found the
‘“‘seated in his chamber on high, leaning
his back against a balcony while the waves of the
great Syrian sea broke behind him.”’ The Prince
declared he would not grant any loads of timber
unless the Egyptian brought him, according to the
old custom, presents of equal value.

Prince

“In times past,” he said, ‘‘my fathers executed the
wishes of the Pharaohs, because Pharaoh was wont
to send six vessels laden with the merchandise of
Egypt to be unloaded in our docks. Thou, then,

Travels of Egyptians in Asia 213

cause the same to be brought also unto me!’’ He
had the account books of his father brought to him
and he had them read in my presence, and it was
found that in all, one thousand tabonou of silver (two
hundred pounds) were entered in his books. And
he said to me: “If the king of Egypt were my mas-
ter, and I, even I, were his servant, he would not
have to cause gold and silver to be brought here,
saying: Perform the mission of Amon. It was not a
royal command that was brought to my father. And
I, verily I, I am not, even I, thy servant; I am not, I,
the servant of him who hath sent thee.”’

To these insolent speeches, Unamonu retorts in
no less high-sounding language, but he agrees to
despatch into Egypt a messenger on a ship convey-
ing seven loads of timber, and some weeks later,
the messenger returns with presents sent by King
Smendes of Tanis. There were four jugs and a
basin of gold, five jugs of silver, ten pieces of royal
linen, five hundred rolls of fine papyrus, five hund-
red ox-hides, five hundred cables, sacks of lentils,
and dried fish. The present was of sufficient value,
for the Prince of Byblos ‘“‘levied three hundred
men, with three hundred oxen, and put overseers
at their head, for the felling of the trees; the timber
remained all winter lying on the ground; then in the
third month of the harvest-time, it was hauled
down to the shore.”

214 Kings and Gods of Egypt

The Egyptian messenger is about to set sail
when anew delay is enforced upon him, the Prince
of Byblos invites him, ironically, to visit the tombs
in which are laid the remains of the messengers of
Pharaoh Khamois (probably Ramses XI); they
had come hither on a similar mission, but were
detained for seventeen years in Byblos and had
never returned to Egypt. This last insult plunges
Unamonu into the deepest despair, the more so as
he sees looming on the horizon of the sea eleven
ships of the Zakkalas, hostile pirates, ready to
capture him as soon as he leaves port. Then,
said the messenger, ‘“‘I sat down and wept; the
scribe of the Prince came out to me and said to
me, ‘What ails thee?’ I replied, ‘Seest thou not
the birds (the herons?) who.return into Egypt?
Behold! they fly back to their cool waters, but I,
how long shall I stay here, abandoned?’ ”* The
Prince, on hearing this, sent the Egyptian two
vessels of wine, a sheep, and Tantnouit, a song-
stress from Egypt, who lived in the palace, saying:
“‘Sing to him, let not his heart be filled with sad
thoughts!’’ And he sent a message to the Zak-
kalas: “I cannot take prisoner the messenger

«This theme was employed by Flaubert in an admirable
passage’ of Salambo, where she laments at the sight of the doves
of Carthage flying towards Italy.

Travels of Egyptians in Asia 215

of Amon in my own country. Give him a chance
to depart, and then you run after him and capture
him.”

On leaving Byblos, the wind casts Unamonu on
the shores of Alasia. But here the papyrus breaks
off, at the very moment when the messenger is re-
lating his misfortunes to Hataba the queen of the
country, and trying to move her heart on his behalf.

The historical interest of this tale must be
obvious to every reader. It throws a faint but
valuable light upon one of the most obscure points
in the history—as far as yet known—of the inter-
course between Egypt and Asia. It refers to the
population of the Zakkalas, who with the Philis-
tines and others (the Shagalashas and Uashashas)
were subjugated by Ramses III, conqueror of the
peoples of the sea; he rid himself of the Zakkalas
by assigning to them the coast between Carmel and
Egypt. Now we see them, settled at Dor, roving
the seas in their pirate ships and raiding trading-
vessels. As for the Phoenicians, settled between
Tyre and Byblos, the insolent words of the Prince
of Byblos sufficiently express their new position
towards Egypt. Doubtless, Egypt still enjoys
amongst these strange people, a certain prestige,
resting upon the long-revered name of the Pha-
raohs, upon her mighty gods, upon her great wealth,

216 Kings and Gods of Egypt

but her force of conquest is exhausted; her emissa-
ries are no longer feared, since certain of them re-
mained for seventeen years in Byblos and died in
bondage there; again, if the chieftains of Lebanon
still permit their timber to be exported to Egypt
for building purposes, it is only upon immediate
payment. Egypt is in her decline.

To sum up, if this legendary literature affords
very little information regarding the political
relations of Egypt with Asia, it throws some new
light upon the Egyptian character. The Egyptians
do not appear to have brought to their observation
of foreign people any great faculty, either of
curiosity or of admiration. But neither do they
seem to have felt for them the customary disdain
of the civilised man for the barbarian. What
chiefly interested them outside Egypt, was still
the Egyptians. Moreover, their intimate know-
ledge of strange lands was confined to the regions
about the Nile. None ventured beyond Lebanon,
save a few soldiers, or emissaries and travellers
by profession. For the common folk, these far-off
lands were fraught with danger, mystery. Sucha
mental attitude is likely to foster the growth
of popular romances, but hardly lends itself to the
production of documents valuable to the historian.

CHAPTER VII
HOMER AND EGYPT

THE importance of Oriental influences upon
the early development of Hellenic civilisation
is no longer disputed; rather, it is a fact
widely recognised. Limiting our subject to the
Homeric poems, the investigations by scholars
like Helbig, Victor Bérard, and Murray, of the
material of the Iliad and the Odyssey, have led
to the discovery of many an Oriental tradition,
especially in the poetic and artistic treatment of
certain passages.

But if the truth of this assertion is broadly
admitted as a general principle, it has not yet been
followed up and verified in all its particular appli-
cations. Hence it may be of interest to point out a
few passages in the I/zad and the Odyssey, in which
the Homeric Bards seem to have drawn freely
upon the art and popular literature of Egypt.

An examination of the subject must be a purely
217

218 Kings and Gods of Egypt

academic study. In order to prove that here or
there ‘“‘Homer borrows from Egypt,” I cannot
speculate with general ideas nor make a call upon
our imaginative faculties; I am compelled to go
into the most petty, tedious details. I must
therefore ask the reader to bear patiently with a
demonstration which cannot avoid the barren
aspect of a piece of research work.

In his remarkable book on the Phenicians and
the Odyssey,' V. Bérard affirms, by the aid of in-
genious arguments, that the episode of the so-
journ of Menelaus in Egypt ‘‘was but the Greek
adaptation of an Egyptian tale.’”’ Menelaus,
held back by the gods in the island of Pharos, near
to Egypt, only succeeds in appeasing their anger,
when he has overcome, by stratagem, the Egypt-
ian Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea. This
skilled magician knows the depths of all the
seas, and can transform himself, according to the
danger that menaces him, into a lion, a dragon,
a panther, a boar; into water, fire, or a tree.
But Menelaus succeeds in seizing him and
compels him to reveal the way of escape from
Egypt, the fate of his companions on leaving
Troy, and the fate in store for him. Thus spake
Proteus:

T ii, p. 65 et seq.

Homer and Egypt 219

But thou, Menelaus, son of Zeus, art not ordained to
die and meet thy fate in Argos, the pasture-land of
horses, but the deathless gods will convey thee to the
Elysian plain and the world’s end, where is Rhada-
manthus of the fair hair, where life is easiest for men.
No snow is there, nor yet great storm, nor any rain;
but always ocean sendeth forth the breeze of the shrill
West to blow cool on men.*

This legend bears a clear Egyptian imprint.
The Proteus of Homer, like the Proteus of Herod-
otus and Virgil,” is, as V. Bérard has pointed out,
the Egyptian Prout, the Pharaoh, son of the gods,
expert magician, who can, like all Egyptian sor-
cerers, suspend the flow of the rivers and of the
waters of the sea, overthrow earth and heaven, and
assume any form he likes. As for the isle of
Pharos, would it not be “the Isle of Pharaoh’”’?
In any case, the Elysian Fields take the form of a
landscape of Egypt, the land that knows neither
rain nor snow. There reigns, as in the Egyptian
Fields of Ialou, Osiris, lord of Amenti, under the
name of Rhadamanthus; there, blows the Zephyr,
the cold wind of the North-West, so dreaded by the
Greeks, since it brought rain and gales, so welcome
to the Egyptians, to whom it brought pleasant
refreshment, as it does even to-day after the sultry

« Odyssey, iv, 560-567. Tr.: Butcher and Lang.
2 Herodotus, ii, 112-116. Virgil, Georgics, iv, 364 et seq.

220 Kings and Gods of Egypt

tempests of the April Khamsin, or the tropical
heat of summer days. On the ancient funeral
stele the desire is constantly expressed by the
dead that he may ‘breathe the gentle wind of the
North.” Ina hot country, like Egypt, what won-
der that his conception of Paradise was a land of
pleasant coolness? Thence, also, his wish to
“drink of the flowing waters of the river.”’ Later,
we see the Isiacs pray to Osiris to grant them
“cool water.’’ From them, the prayer passed on
to the Romans, who termed the Paradise where the
dead shall find coolness and bliss, refrigerium.
Finally, the very same expression finds a place
in the Christian liturgy, where we pray for the
spiritual “‘refreshment’’ of our dead, though the
Christian Paradise of to-day retains little resem-
lance to the Fields of Ialou. The Paradisiac
ideal of Homer is certainly foreign in its concep-
tion, and all its features point to an Egyptian
source. It is, therefore, very probable that the
Nostos of Menelaus is imitated from an Egyptian
tale.

But if this Nostos contains topics commonplace
in Egyptian folk-lore, it refers to no particular
narrative. On the contrary, a strict parallelism
is now possible between an episode in the Odyssey—

Homer and Egypt oor

“

the Shipwreck of Ulysses in the land of the Phza-
cians—and an Egyptian tale; for there has recently
come to light an hieratic papyrus of the XIIth
dynasty, which has been published, translated,
and commented upon by M. W. Golenischeff.*

Both relate the adventures of a seafaring man,
who having set sail in fair weather is suddenly
overtaken by a storm. Let us hear the Egyptian
tale first:

I went down to the sea in a ship one hundred and
fifty cubits long, forty cubits broad, with one hundred
and fifty sailors, the best in Egypt, who had seen the
sky and the earth, and whose hearts were bolder than
lions; they could predict a storm before it came, anda
tempest before it arose. [Nevertheless] the storm
came, suddenly, when we were out at sea. We made
for the land; the wind carried us thither, and caused
the waves to increase and rise to a height of eight
cubits. A plank of wood was afloat. I seized upon it.
As for the ship! all who remained upon her were
drowned, none excepted. And lo! I was washed upon
an island by a wave of the sea. I passed three days
(there) alone, with (only) my heart for a companion.
I slept in a wood that formed a hiding-place, where the
shadows covered me. Then I stretched out my legs,
went to find something to put in my mouth. I found
there, figs, grapes, all kinds of magnificent leeks,

1W. Golenischeff, Papyrus 115 of the Imperial Hermitage, St.
Petersburg (ap. Recueil de travaux relatifs dla philologie égyptienne,
xxviii, pp. 73-112). I follow in the main Golenischeff’s trans-
lation, but endeavour to keep more closely to the text.

222 Kings and Gods of Egypt

berries, seeds, melons plentiful as dust of the earth,
fish, and birds; there was nothing that was not there.
So I ate my fill, then I placed on the earth a portion of
the abundance that filled my hands. I dug a pit, I
made a fire, I raised a pile that (the offerings) might
pass by the fire to the gods.

Let us turn to Odysseus. He embarked alone
for Calypso’s island; after sailing for eighteen
days without any incident occurring, there loomed
before him “the shadowy hills of the land of the
Pheacians.’’ But Zeus lets loose a storm and a
great wave ‘‘smites down upon him”’ and shatters
his raft to pieces. Odysseus ‘‘bestrides a single

yy

beam as one rideth a courser. For three days
and three nights he keeps afloat and ‘“‘ ponders in
his heart.’’? Finally ‘‘a great wave bears him to
the rugged shore.’ He takes shelter in a wood;
he creeps between ‘‘twin bushes secluded from
wind, rain, and sun,’”’ and he falls asleep.4 In
another passage he describes the wonderful vege-
tation of the blessed land of the Pheacians:
‘There grew tall trees blossoming, pear-trees and
pomegranates, apple-trees with bright fruit, and
sweet figs and olives in their bloom, ... and
cluster upon cluster of the grape.’’’ There is no

™ Od., v, 365 et seq. 2 Od., v, 424. 3 Od., v, 425.
40d., V, 475-493. 5 Od., vii, 114 et seg.

Homer and Egypt 223

mention here of offerings to the gods of the
country, but as M. Golenischeff points out, it oc-
curs in the episode of Odysseus and Polyphemus.
There, arrived at the cave of Cyclops, Odysseus
and his companions ‘‘kindled a fire and made
burnt offerings . . . and took of the cheeses and
did eat.’’?

Listen again to the words of the shipwrecked
Egyptian:

And lo! I heard a voice of thunder. I uncovered
my face and I saw a great serpent approaching... .
He said to me: ‘‘ Who has brought thee hither, little
one? who has brought thee hither? ...’’ Then
he took me in his mouth and he carried me over to the
place where he stayed. ... And he said to me
(again): ‘‘Who has brought thee, little one, who has
brought thee to this island of the sea, where the two
shores are in the waters?”’

Thereupon, the Shipwrecked Mariner replies
to him in the story related above.

As for Odysseus, he is welcomed in Phzacia by
Nausicaa, by King Alcinous and his subjects—
that is, by human beings, not by monsters. There-
fore, no sound like thunder announces the arrival
of the Phzacians. In the episode of Polyphemus,
on the contrary, the Cyclops enters with a great:

*Od., 15,231.

224 Kings and Gods of Egypt

din’ into the cave in which Odysseus has taken
refuge. M. Golenischeff remarks upon a striking
detail; when the Egyptian awakens, he ‘‘uncovers”’
his face that he may see; so also the companions
of Odysseus, asleep on the beach, when they are
awakened by the voice of their master.? Gesture
and attitude are again similar when the serpent
lifts up the Shipwrecked Mariner from the side
of his burnt offering and transports him to his
own seat;’ and when Alcinous, finding his guest
“sitting near the ashes” of the hearth, takes him
by the hand, raises him, and leads him to a shining
chair. Again, in the episode of the Pheacians, as
in the papyrus, the hero has to answer twice the
same questions. First, Queen Arete asks him,
“Who art thou?’’4 Later, Alcinous repeats the
questions’ and, like the Shipwrecked Mariner,
Odysseus gives an account of his misfortunes.

In his reply to the Shipwrecked Mariner, the
Serpent shows himself benevolent and kindly.

a

Fear nothing, fear nothing, little one, let not thy
countenance be sad. Thou hast come unto me
because God has granted that thou shouldst live,
and he has led thee to this enchanted island. . . ‘
Behold! thou shalt pass here month after month,

™ Od., ix, 235. 2 Od., x, 179. 3 Od., vii, 168.
4 Od,, Vin 237. 5 Od., viii, 548.

Homer and Egypt 225

until it comes to pass that thou hast spent four months
in this island; and a vessel shall come from the coun-
try [literally, from the Court] with sailors, whom thou
hast known; thou shalt depart with them for thy
country and thou shalt die in thine own city.
Thou shalt press thy children to thy bosom, thou stale
embrace thy wife, thou shalt behold thy home, which
is better than all; thou shalt reach thy own land and
thou shalt live there among thy brothers. .

Similar words welcome Odysseus among the
Pheacians. Nausicaa says to him: “It is Zeus
who giveth weal to men, and thy lot is of him and

My
:

so thou must endure it. . For the poor and
strangers are near the heart of Zeus. That is why
Zeus, like the Egyptian god, foretells the return
of Odysseus,? who yearns to see again ‘‘his noble
wife in his home, and his friends unharmed.’’3
Nausicaa and Alcinous, in turn, wish him the
experience of this joy in his native land.

The gratitude of the Shipwrecked Mariner
manifests itself in rapturous promises: ‘‘I will
describe thy souls to Pharaoh; I will make known
to him thy greatness; I will send to thee holy oils
and incense? such as are offered to the gods; I will

t Od., vi, 189. 2 Od., xili, 133. 3 Gah Xili, 42-43.

4In a passage non-essential for comparison with the Homeric
text, the Serpent answers ironically: ‘‘Thou art not rich in per-

fumes @nti, for all thou hast is but incense (sonter nouter); but
I who am the Lord of the land of Punt, I have there the perfume

3)

226 Kings and Gods of Egypt

send to thee ships full of the treasures of Egypt,
as is fitting fora god... .” In the same way,
when Odysseus thanks Alcinous, he prophesies
for him glory imperishable by the side of Zeus,"
and to Nausicaa, he says that he will “‘worship her
as though she were a god.’’?

The Serpent, replying to the compliments of the
Shipwrecked Mariner, says: ‘‘I am the lord of
the Land of Punt... and lo! it shall happen
that as soon as thou art departed from this place,
thou shalt never behold it more, for it shall be
transformed into waters.’’ And to add to the
fantastic character of the island, the Shipwrecked
Mariner remarks that “it was a distant country

,

that no man knew.” Likewise, the Phzacians

anti. . . .”’ M. Golenischeff adds an apt remark about the serpent
form of the lord of the Land of Spices and Perfumes. Our tale
re-echoes ancient fables concerning the inhabitants of countries
like Punt, or concerning the Egyptian dealers along the Red Sea;
they tried to conceal the origin of the scented gums and other
perfumes, and emphasised the dangers encountering the seekers of
these substances. This was that they might demand high prices
for them. Herodotus tells us that the Arabs who gather incense
“must drive away a multitude of little flying serpents who guard
the trees.”” Theophrastus also tells us that one gathers cinna-
mon after ‘‘driving away many serpents, the bite of which is
deadly” (Hist. plant., ix, 5). On certain coasts of Arabia,
incense belonged exclusively to the king of the country (see
Périple de la mer Erythrée,12); this explains why the king of the
island appears under the guise of a great reptile, surrounded
by a family of seventy-five serpents.
t Od., Vil, 333- 2 Od., viii, 467. Cf. vi, 8.

- Homer and Egypt 227

are said to inhabit the island of Scheria, ‘‘far from
civilised man’’; according to the words of Nau-
sicaa: ‘‘ Far apart we live, in the wash of the waves,
the outermost of men, and no other mortals are
conversant with us.’’* Here M. Golenischeff
remarks again: ‘The fact that the Serpent-King
‘prince of Punt’ is supposed to be living with all
his family, not in his own kingdom, but upon an
island, is in keeping with the Homeric statement
that the Pheacians also were dwelling upon an
island, Scheria, instead of in their own country
of Hyperia,? whence they fled because the Cyclopes
‘harried them continually, being mightier than
they.’’”’ Finally, like the island of our papyrus
that shall disappear beneath the waves after the
departure of the Shipwrecked Mariner, so the
island of Scheria is doomed to destruction after
Odysseus has left it. Poseidon, who hates the
Pheacians, ‘will overshadow their city with a
huge mountain.’’’ In either case, it is the king
of the island who divulges the fate of the island
to the hero of the tale.

At the moment when the farewells are uttered,
the Serpent renews his good wishes: ‘‘Good health,
good health, little one, even to thy house; thou

t Od., vi, 8. 2 Od., Vi, 204. 3 Od., vi, 4-6.

228 Kings and Gods of Egypt

shalt see thy children, and may my name stand
well in thy city...’ Then he heaps different
kinds of gifts upon his guest, who goes down to the
shore and embarks, after having rendered thanks
to his sovereign. Odysseus, also, receives good
wishes and presents from Alcinous and the Phza-
cians, to whom in return he renders thanks and
salutations.‘ Further, when the Shipwrecked
Mariner lands in his own country, “‘the bow of his
ship is run upon the shore”’; and so with the Phea-
cian crew, whose ship is grounded in such a fashion
that half of her keel rests on land.? Brought
unto Pharaoh, the Egyptian presents himself as a
man ‘‘who has seen much and suffered many
hardships’’—words which are echoed in the burden
of Odysseus: ‘I have endured pain of heart in
passing through the wars of men and the grievous
waves of the sea.’”’ Even the epithet which the
Egyptian applies to himself, “‘the cautious ser-
vant’’ (ager), is it not the prototype of the famous
moAvteoTOS ToAUUNYaves ’Oducceds?

From the convincing parallelism, followed up
in detail by M. Golenischeff, I conclude, with him,
that ‘“‘there must be more than a fortuitous
resemblance between the Egyptian tale and the
episode of Odysseus among the Pheacians.’’ Nor

t Od., Viii, 408; viii, 430; xiii, 10, 122, 135. 2 Qd., xiii, 113.

Homer and Egypt 229
are the similarities confined to such particulars as
might appear in any story of any shipwreck;
but the two accounts reveal a common arrange-
mentand plan. Nor is the incident of Odysseus to
be compared with the Egyptian tale alone. M.
Golenischeff has found all its essential features in
one of the stories of A Thousand and One Nights,
‘““The Seven Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor.”” Cer-
tain of the episodes in the Arab tale occur in the
Homeric narrative, but are omitted from the
Egyptian; contrariwise, others have been employed
in the Odysseus recital, ascribing to the Cyclopes
the adventures of the Pheacians; and, again, we
find in the Arabian text certain features of the
Egyptian story of which the Greek writer has not
made use. These points of contact and of diverg-
ence between any two of the three stories led M.
Golenischeff to suppose that the Homeric and
Arab authors had not drawn directly upon their
Egyptian ancestor, but that all three, Egyptian,
Greek, Arab, had borrowed, each according to his
own particular taste, from a common Oriental
source, very ancient—since it must be prior to the
Egyptian papyrus which dates from the XIIth
dynasty, 2000 B.c. If we follow here the theories
propounded by Helbig and Bérard, we conjecture
this common source to be Asiatic, probably Phoeni-

230 Kings and Gods of Egypt

cian. Be this last hypothesis as it may, until
some new and happy discovery puts us on the
track of the archetype of the hieroglyphic, Greek,
and Arabian texts, we must consider the Egyptian
tale (at least provisionally) as the source of the
Pheeacian episode.

Not only did Homer borrow from Egyptian
folk-lore, he seems also to have been inspired by
Egyptian art. Helbig writes of the Shield of
Achilles, that ‘‘the descriptions of certain scenes
are inspired by plastic models. These models are
chiefly metal vases of Phoenician importation or
Greek imitations of such.”"* Limiting my inquiry
to the first part of this proposition, I desire to
investigate certain sources of Homeric inspiration
and to discover whether these ‘‘plastic models”
were not the funeral scenes of which thousands of
examples are found in the forms of pictures or
bas-reliefs in the Egyptian tombs, from the Mem-
phite mastabas down to the Theban hypogea.?

« Helbig, Das Homerische Epos, 1890, p. 533-

2Murray (History of Greek Sculpture, 2d edition, 1890, p. 42
et seq.) has attempted a plastic reconstruction of the Shield, but
the scenes he represents—harvest, dance, the hounds—are
derived from Assyrian, Phoenician, Greek, and Egyptian models.
He employs these different models in one and the same scene.
Thus, in the attack of the flock by the lion, the flock is Assyrian;
the lion, Phoenician; the dogs, Egyptian. Our comparisons rest ex-
clusively on Egyptian pictures, generally complete in themselves.

Homer and Egypt 231

To prove my argument, it is necessary to enter,
again, the field of barren facts. I take, for my
purpose, the scenes of rural life engraved upon the
Shield of Achilles. ‘“‘The representation,’’ as
pointed out by Brunn and Helbig, ‘‘is subdivided
into as many pictures as there are seasons; the
first depicts the tilling of the fields; the second,
harvest; the third, vintage; the last, the shepherd’s
life.’”’* On the Shield these pictures are supposed
to succeed one another, or to be placed one above
the other; likewise in the Egyptian tombs the
scenes of ploughing, harvest, vintage, are placed
in sequence on one wall of a hypogeum, or upon
neighbouring walls, while the position of the pic-
tures of shepherd life vary, being less characteristic
of particular seasons than are the others.

It may be objected that although the subjects
are the same, the poetical descriptions in the
Iliad and the painted scenes on the funeral monu-
ments are expressive of entirely different intentions.
The Shield of Achilles is but a pretext for poetical
descriptions, while the Egyptian pictures serve a
definite religious purpose. If the artist portrays,
on the walls of the tombs, scenes of tillage, harvest,
vintage, it is not for decorative effect, but in order
to bring before the eyes of the dead, who inhabit

1 Das Homerische Epos (Leach, revised edition, p. 508).

232 Kings and Gods of Egypt

the tomb, all the stages of the preparation of the
funeral offerings. The various and successive
phases of agricultural labour go on continually in
the next world, as they are fixed for ever on the
walls of the tomb, so that the dead may rest
assured that he will never lack for food. But
at the same time, in spite of the religious and
practical character of the work, the Egyptian
decorators treated their subjects from an artistic
standpoint and observed the rules of pictorial
composition. The subdivision into seasons with
the separate treatment of each was therefore as
necessary to the Egyptian decorator as to the
Greek poet; moreover, this method is referred to in
an inscription in a tomb at El Kab.t Above the
scenes that we shall compare with the Homeric
account, we read that ‘‘Paheri [the owner of the
tomb] gazes on the season of Shemou and the season

of Pirit and on all the works that are done in the
fields. ”’2

tJ. Tylor, The Tomb of Paheri at El Kab, Plate III (Egypt.
Exploration Fund, t. xi); cf. Brugsch, Matériaux pour servir a la
reconstitution du calendrier, p. 16.

?The Egyptian year was divided into three seasons of four
months; the inundation Shd@it (from the end of July to the end of
November); the winter Pirit (from December to March); the
summer Shemou (from April to July). The field work took place
in winter (seedtime) and in summer (harvest). Cf. Brugsch, Die
Aegyptologie, pp. 357-361.

Homer and Egypt 233

If the general arrangement of the Homeric
descriptions corresponds to that of the Egyptian
pictures, the analogy in the details of each scene
is still more striking.

Ploughing *

Furthermore he set in the shield a soft fresh-
ploughed field, rich tilth and wide, the third time
ploughed; and many ploughers therein drave their yokes
to and fro as they wheeled about. Whensoever they
came to the boundary of the field and turned, then
would a man come to each and give into his hands a
goblet of sweet wine, while others would be turning back
along the furrows, fain to reach the boundary of the
deep tilth.?

A ploughing scene of the same character has
been represented in the Egyptian tombs from
remotest times. The two essential and antithetic

features of the Homeric version can be found
in a picture in the hypogeum of Nakhti, ‘a priest at-

tached to the service of Amon under the XVITIth
dynasty, about 1500 B.c. (Fig. 10). Observe:

I. The going to and fro of the ox-teams which
cross the field from the outer boundary to a tree
indicating the central point where each man wheels
his plough about.

t [liad, xviii, 541-547. 2 Trans.: Lang, Leaf, and Myers.
3 Mémoires de la Mission archéologique frangaise au Caire, v. 3,
p. 476 and Plate II.

234 Kings and Gods of Egypt

2. The incident of the man who drinks. In
the tomb of Nakhti, he drinks from a goat’s skin
which hangs from the boughs of a tree,* instead
of from the Homeric goblet.

In the mastabas of the Vth and VIth dynasties, -

Sr @

P >? f
> =a
: Viawat

Fic. 10.—Ploughing and Harvest (XVIIIth Dynasty).

the man who drinks appears, not in the ploughing,
but in the harvest scene, where, on reaching’ the
boundary of the field, he puts his sickle under his
arm and carries an elongated vessel to his lips
(Fig. 13).2 Slight variations of the Homeric
ploughman are found in the Egyptian pictures of

"From a tomb at El Kab (Erman, Aegypten, p. 575), and Wil-

kinson, Manners and Customs, ii, p. 419.
? Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, ii, p. 419.

Homer and Egypt 235

the harvest. In the tombs at Zaouit-el-Meitin,*
of the Vth and VIth dynasties, about 2600 B.c.,
a man comes to meet a harvester at the boundary
of the field and with both hands holds out to him
a vessel that his companion may drink (Fig. 12).
The motive was familiar enough to the Egyptian
decorators, and it seems likely that some day from

Fic. 11.—A Goat’s-Skin. Fic. 12. death the Drinking-
Cup (VIth Dynasty).

among the hundreds of similar scenes that have
been found in mastabas and hypogea and are yet
unpublished, there will turn up ploughing-scenes
which correspond to the one described in Homer.

Harvest ?

Furthermore he set therein a demesne-land deep in
corn, where hinds were reaping with sharp sickles in their
hands. Some armfuls along the swathe were falling in
rows to the earth, while others the sheaf-binders were
binding in twisted bands of straw. Three sheaf-binders

Lepsius, Denkmédiler, ii, 106 b. 2 Iliad, xviii, 550-560.

236 Kings and Gods of Egypt
stood over them, while behind, boys gathering corn,

bearing it in their arms gave it constantly to the binders;
and among them the lord in silence was standing at the
i A ye

‘i OK Ae

Fic. 13.—Harvesters (XVIIIth Dynasty).

PX

ae mt iss i RAS

Gh
cy Th

Nv

swathe with his staff, rejoicing in his heart. And hench-
men apart beneath an oak were making ready a feast,
and preparing a great ox they had sacrificed; while the
women were strewing much white barley to be a
supper for the hinds.*

All the essential features of this description
occur in the Egyptian pictures of the harvest.

aR ae an A

Fic. 14.—Reapers and Gleaners (XVIIth Dynasty).

Again, in the hypogeum of Nakhti (Fig. 10), we
see above the ploughman, three reapers cutting
with their sickles the ears of corn, which stand as
high as their heads; behind them, a little girl stoops
to gather the ears of corn which she puts in a little

*Trans.: Lang, Leaf, and Myers.

ra

Homer and Egypt 237

basket; above, the binders bind closely together
by means of a cord and a stick the sheaves which
lie heaped in a great wicker basket, while, on their
left, two girls are plucking flax (Fig. 10). In
contrast with the Homeric description, here, the
children glean for themselves, instead of binding
up the sheaves for the reapers; the same thing

Fic. 15.—Binders (Vth Dynasty). Fic. 16.—The Master.

occurs in a picture in the Paheri’s tomb* (Fig.
14), where two little girls are seen gleaning, the
first saying to the men who are reaping the corn:
“Give me a handful... .” (Egyptian: DOT,
manipulus sheaf). But in other pictures, the
reapers are helped by other workmen who hold up
the sheaves for those who bind them together ;?
sometimes it is the flax stalks which are being
made all the same length before they are bound
together. Finally, ina Memphite mastaba, we see

«J. Tylor, The Tomb of Paheri, Plate SOU
2 Lepsius, Denkmiéiler, ii, 106 b.

238 Kings and Gods of Egypt

the corn cut by the sickle, falling in rows along
the swathe,* as in Homer (Fig. 17). We should
further notice, inserted in several harvest scenes,
the motives of the man who quenches his thirst,
two variants of which occur in Figures 12 and 14,
upon which comments have already been made.?

As for the meal prepared by the Homeric x7jpuxec,
it has its exact equivalent in the dismemberment

WAT
Bins Me

SANT
ei

.
8

f)

Fic. 17.—Reapers (Vth Dynasty).

IN

of the sacrificial bull by the sacrificial slaugh-
terers, portrayed in a corner of the picture in the
tomb of Nakhti. In Egypt, as in Homeric Greece,
every meal is also a sacrifice, and the epithet
given to the men who prepare the Homeric repast,
tepevcavtec, Can also be applied to the Egyptian
slaughterers. Here, in the tomb, it is, pri-
marily a meal for the deceased that is in course

*Dumichen, Resultate der archaelog. photograph. Expedition,
Plate X. See also Newberry, Beni-Hasan, i, Plate 29.

?In Nakhti’s tomb, we see above the picture of the harvest,
one of the measuring of the corn in bushels and the threshing of
it—the last stages of the preparation of the cereal offerings.

2

Homer and Egypt 239

of preparation (Fig. 10), and the dismemberment
is a preparatory stage before the offering of the
thighs, which are seen above upon the sacrificial
pile. The essential point to notice is that the
sacrifice of the bull, portrayed here, above the
harvest scene and on the boundary of the field, is
presented, as in the lad, as a necessary accom-
paniment of the labour of the field. Finally, let
it be observed, how Nakhti and his wife pour a
libation from a wide-throated bottle upon the pile
of varied offerings, and which owing to the faulty
perspective of the drawing, appears to flow down,
at the same time, upon the slaughtered bull.
Does not their action recall the women of Homer?
Does it not appear as if they were “‘strewing the
supper’’ with liquid flour?

No less characteristic in both picture and poetic
description is the presence of the master, standing
erect, silent, his staff in his hand. Speaking
correctly, Nakhti is not standing, but is seated
beneath a light summer tent, such as Egyptians
used to pitch in their fields (Fig 10) ; but, elsewhere,
the dead, while contemplating the labour, for the
production of his funeral offering, is represented in
a standing attitude (Fig. 16). Even the Greek
idiotism, yn%écvvos xo, ‘rejoicing in his heart,”
has its literal counterpart in the hieroglyphic

240 Kings and Gods of Egypt

commentary upon scenes of this character. Con-
tinually, above such pictures, words like these are
found: ‘‘He (the lord of the tomb) sees, and re-
joices in his heart (skhem ab) to see the labours of
the field)’ = *

Vintage?

Also he set therein a vineyard teeming plenteously
with clusters, wrought in fair gold; black were the grapes,
but the vines hung throughout on silver poles. And
around it he ran a ditch of cyanus and round that a fence
of tin; and one single pathway led to it, whereby the
vintagers might go when they should gather the vintage.
And maidens and striplings in childish glee bare the
sweet fruit in plaited baskets.3

In the tomb of Nakhti, the picture of the vintage
faces those of ploughing and harvest (Fig. 18).
Here, as in the vintage scenes‘ of the VIth and

* Above the representation of Nakhti seated in his summer-
house is inscribed, ‘‘Act of sitting in the summer-house and of
viewing the demesne lands on behalf of... .”. The expression
skhem ab occurs in the vintage picture.

2 Iliad., xviii, 561-568. 3 Trans.: Lang, Leaf, and Myers.

4 Above the vine-arbour in the tomb of Phtahhetep (Dumichen,
Resultate . . . Plate VIII) we read the phrase ouha daririt ‘to
gather the grape, to reap the vintage”; the word “grape” daririt is
“determined” by the vine, represented by a stock, the shoots of
which are propped up by two poles. Under the New Empire, a
Theban tomb, called “‘the tomb of the vines,” affords characteristic
illustrations of the Egyptian vine. Here the walls and ceiling of
each chamber are ornamented with the vine-arbour (published
by M. Virey in the Recueil de travaux relatifs @ la philologie
égyptienne (t. xx—xxii).

Homer and Egypt 241

VIIth dynasties, the vineyard is an arched arbour,
in which the vines are supported by vertical and
horizontal cross-poles from which fall the heavily
laden branches (Fig.
19). On the Shield,
also, the vine forms a . Ly
long arched arbour, Pa

supported throughout jie mm Hy ai
its length by poles, Wits id
with a single alleyway Ne ii
running through it. Li ne Vi ain il
The vintagers of

Nakhti, likewise, have
room only for two to
walk abreast. In the
tomb of Phtahhetep,
one man gathers the

grapes from low down
on the left, another

from low down on the

right; both stoop, from Fic. 18.—The Vintage (between
Hunting and Fishing) (XVIIIth

lack of space to stand Dynasty).

upright, while a child,

gathering from the side of the arbour, stands
and plucks the grapes with both his hands. We
see the bunches placed in plaited baskets and

borne to the wine-press. Thus, the Homeric
16

ies iL

% f A wh

<

Homer and Egypt 243

vine, in its essential features, recalls the Egyptian
(Fig. 19).

The Greek text adds a Bacchic chorus, which is
missing from the Egyptian pictures: ‘‘ And in their
midst a boy made pleasant music on a clear-toned
viol, and sang thereto a sweet Linos-song' with
delicate voice; while the rest, with feet falling
together, kept time with the music and song.”
The Egyptian tombs show us no singing boy beside
the vineyard, no viol, no dancing chorus, but there
is the wine-press in which vintagers holding on with
one hand to a beam or to a cord (Fig. 18 and 19)
tread the grapes rhythmically.? It is probable
that they used also songs and shouts ‘to give a
measure to their movements. One of the bas-
reliefs in the tomb of Phtahhetep shows us children
playing, wrestling, turning somersaults, while the
hieroglyphic legend (gah (?) daririt) sets forth

* Probably a lament for departing summer.

? The Egyptian tombs very often show by the side of pictures
of the preparation of offerings, scenes of pleasure, dance, and
instrumental music. Even where the decorator is cramped for
space, he wedges in the dance scene. In the Louvre, three stele,
C 16, 17, 18, reproduce in miniature the decorations of the tomb
of a certain Ousirtasen who lived under the XIIth dynasty. On
stele C 18, the deceased is engaged in hunting and surveying the
labours of the field; on stele C 17, he receives one by one the
funeral offerings, while a maiden dances to the accompaniment of
harps and hand-clapping. Murray has reproduced one of these
Egyptian dances in his reconstruction of the Shield.

244 Kings and Gods of Egypt

that these rejoicings are connected with the vintage
time.

Finally, there are some curious analogies in
the setting of these scenes. The Homeric vine is
surrounded by ‘‘a ditch of cyanus” (xuavéqy ~aTETOY) ;
and around that ‘‘a fence of tin” (x0¢ xacortépou).
Now, the vineyard in the tomb of Nakhti is
surrounded, above and below, by scenes of
fishing and marsh -hunting, so that the walls
appear bounded by deep ditches in which grow
thick rushes. This characteristic marsh land-
scape is a traditional setting for vintage scenes.
Wine was associated, for the Egyptians, with a
particular kind of scenery. They drank their
wine in summer-houses on the edge of the waters,
where they snared birds or fished with nets or
harpoons. Therefore, the scenes relating to the
funeral offering of wine are those of marsh fishing,
or of the decoy of marsh birds. If the dead has
ever before his eyes pools, water-thickets, and
vineyards, it is because these pleasant places were
always found near to one another in his earthly
life, as they are on the walls of histomb. It is of
interest, therefore, that the Homeric vine should be
likewise encircled by a bluish ditch and a fence of
whitish hue, as if it might have been set in water
and a thicket of reeds.

Homer and Egypt 245

The Attack of the Oxen by Lions*

Also he wrought therein a herd of kine with upright
horns, and the kine were fashioned of gold and tin,
and with lowing they hurried from the byre to pasture
beside a murmuring river, beside the waving reed.
And herdsmen of gold were following with the kine,
four of them, and nine dogs fleet of foot came after
them. But two terrible lions among the foremost kine
had seized a loud-roaring bull that bellowed mightily
as they hailed him, and the dogs and the young
men sped after him. The lions rending the great
bull’s hide were devouring his vitals and his black
blood while the herdsmen in vain tarred on their
fleet dogs to set on, for they shrank from biting the
lions but stood hard by and barked and swerved away.?

The characteristic features of this description
are produced in only a few pictures of the Egyptian
tombs. Pastoral scenes occur constantly in the
Memphite mastabas and the hypogea of Beni-
Hasan and El-Bersheh;’ but the essential point
of comparison, the attack of the lion, is missing.
On the contrary, a picture in the mastaba of
Phtahhetep‘ gives us, beneath the vintage, a
hunting-scene in which occurs the Homeric motive
of the lion. The incident takes place in an un-
dulating part of the desert, and not on the banks

* Iliad, xviii, 573-586. 2 Trans.: Lang, Leaf, and Myers.

3 Newberry, Beni-Hasan, ii, Plate 12.
4Dtmichen, Resuliate . . ., Plate VIII.

246 Kings and Gods of Egypt

of a river. Moreover, it would appear to be a
lion-hunt with a live bull serving as a bait, rather
than the attack upon a flock by a lion. Yet the
group of the lion and the bellowing bull whose
bowels are moved with terror, and the group of the
hunter or ox-herd exciting the fleet greyhounds
which ‘‘swerve away,’’ prudently sheltering them-

A uN :
(R

\

selves behind their master, invite comparison
(Fig. 20).

The motive of a lion seizing upon a bull was
treated in other works of art. On an Egyptian
axe in the Berlin Museum, we see the lion seizing
the bull by the muzzle as in the funeral picture.*
On a bronze cup in the Cairo Museum, we see a
flock grazing on the banks of the Nile, where the
fish leap high and the reeds grow tall; the cattle
are chewing the cud, a cow suckles her calf, when,
suddenly, a lion dashes into their midst, and hurls
himself at the head of one of the animals. ?

« G. Steindorff, Die Bliitezeit des Pharaonenreiches (1900), p. 56.
t Jahrbuch des kaiserl. deutsch. archaeol. Instituts, Bd. xiii,
1898, 1. Cf. Steindorff, p. 134.

Homer and Egypt 247

To sum up, the scenes on the Shield dealing with
agricultural life recall, in their general arrangement
as well as in certain particular details, a number of
Egyptian pictures scattered among the tombs of all
periods, or collected in one monument, as in the
hypogeum of Nakhti. Brunn and Helbig have
already pointed out that each of these scenes
was “enhanced by antithetic arrangement.’’! The
ploughmen work energetically, but each one, at the
end of the furrow, is refreshed with a cup of wine;
the reapers cut the corn and bind it into sheaves—
opposite them the master stands idle, overseeing
the labour of his servants; the vintagers pluck the
ripe grapes—beside them others make song and
music. ‘The same well-balanced contrasts are ex-
hibited on the walls of the mastabas and hypogeas;
in the pictures of the harvest, in particular, the
antitheses are carefully carried out. Elsewhere
we find the Homeric motives differently treated;
many details of the Egyptian pictures have been
misunderstood or omitted from the Homeric
description, while it is sometimes the Greek text
that carries on the development. Such differences
can be easily explained. The Egyptian sculptor
or painter had to fit his designs to the space they
would occupy upon the wall; often he had to sub-

* Lépopée homérique, p. 508.

248 Kings and Gods of Egypt

ordinate his choice of details to their religious
significance, while the poet need bring into his
poetical descriptions only essential or artistic
elements. On the other hand, the painter and
sculptor are limited to the presentment of a par-
ticular action at a particular moment, while the
poet can present his subject in its entirety, from
the beginning of the action to its end. Therefore,
the difference of treatment by painter and poet
cannot be advanced as an argument against the
hypothesis that the Homeric treatment was based
upon an Egyptian model. As Helbig has correctly
surmised, ‘‘plastic reminiscence, poetic expres-
sion,—these are two elements which must be
considered in explaining the details of these
descriptions. ’’?

It only remains to be asked how the imagination
of the Homeric Bards came under the influence of
Egyptian art. Was it through the channel of
Phoenician works of art? Knowing the influence
Egypt exercised over Phoenician art, this view is
worthy of consideration. But was it not possible
that the Greeks should have had personal know-
ledge of the Egyptian models? We know that
the ancient necropolis, at Memphis and elsewhere,

* L'épopée homérique, p. 329.

Homer and Egypt 249

attracted visitors,t and the Greeks, whom we
know had free access into Egypt, would not be the
less eager to penetrate the mysteries of the tombs.
Be that as it may, the Homeric Bards seem to have
been familiar with Egyptian funeral bas-reliefs
or pictures, or imitations of them. ° But through
what channel the influence came is not, at this
moment, our concern. We wish only to point out
that there was such influence. We do not pre-
sume to say that we have discovered, among the
innumerable funeral pictures, the actual originals
that inspired the Greek poet. But we ask to be
permitted to draw the conclusion that upon the
Shield of Achilles are presented, with a remarkable
fidelity, decorative motives that were employed
in Egypt from the time of the first dynasties.

t From the VIth dynasty (see Mariette, Les Mastabas, p. 417),
there appears on the funeral stele a formula of, probably, still
earlier date, concerning ‘‘the living who come to the tomb.”
These are of every condition, and not relatives, but visitors who
come to the necropolis simply out of curiosity. The Tale of
Satni-Kahmois, written in Ptolemaic times, depicts personages
of the XI Xth dynasty sightseeing among the tombs and making
comments upon the pictures and inscriptions. We often find in
the tombs Egyptian or Greek graffiti—testimonies of these visits.

CHAPTER VIII

THE READING OF HIEROGLYPHICS

”

“HER beauty remains hidden; none could
lift her veil.” This ine from a hymn to Isis

ee ee eer
might, until the end

nineteenth century,
have been applied t¢ Egypt. ere was a land
offering to the visi ding monuments
which appealed to the artistic taste of even
the uncultivated, but man’s intelligence was
baffled by the bewildering tracery of birds, animals,
and lines wrought into the stones. Since the
Emperor Theodosius, at the end of the fourth
century, had closed the temples for worship and
dispersed the priesthood of Osiris and Amon, the
secret of this pictorial script had been lost. The
Christian Copts, indeed, had continued to speak
the dialects of ancient Egypt, but as they used the
Greek alphabet when writing them, those pictorial
signs which the Greeks called hieroglyphics, fell
into oblivion.
250

The Reading of Hieroglyphics 251

Seven centuries of Greek and Roman rule in
Egypt had sufficed to bring about, progressively,
the decay of the language and the national civili-
sation, and the abandonment of the old script.
Though the Greeks felt a keen interest in the Egypt-
ian religion and philosophy, they appear to have
been disheartened by the difficulties of the lan-
guage. Herodotus, Diodorus, Strabo, who visited
Egypt and have left descriptions of her customs
and institutions, were content with second-hand
information—not always reliable—from the lips
of interpreters. Their knowledge of the writing
seems to have been very superficial. Herodotus
says:* ‘‘There are two kinds of characters; one is
called sacred, the other popular.’
confirms this statement: ‘‘The priests teach the
youth two sorts of letters; the ‘sacred,’ used by
the priests, and others which are for the common
purposes of life.’”’ Modern science has borrowed
from this tradition—a tradition only half-true—
two expressions for the two forms of Egyptian
characters; the Mieroglyphic writing, engraved on
monuments, and the demotic writing used for

’

Diodorus?

everyday purposes.
There were, however, certain Greeks who ap-
proached the problem of the Egyptian language.
* Herodotus, ii, 36. 2 Diodorus, i, 6. Trans.: G. Booth.

252 Kings and Gods of Egypt

Diogenes Laertius says that Democritus, one of the
Ionian philosophers, about 450 B.c., had written
dissertations upon the hieroglyphics of Meroe and
the texts engraved on an obelisk of Memphis. We
also possess a few extracts of a hieroglyphic dic-
tionary compiled by Cheremon, a keeper of the
Library of the Serapeum in the first century A.D."
We learn, for example, that the idea of joy was
expressed by the figure of a woman playing on a
dulcimer, that a bow stood for swiftness, and the
idea of old age was rendered by the outline of an
old man. It was on the ground of this limited
knowledge, true as far as it went in this case, that
it was for a long time believed that hieroglyphics
were signs standing for objects or ideas; that is
to say, were ideographs or symbolic characters.
Another treatise on Hieroglyphics composed in
Egyptian by a native called Horus, and translated
into Greek about 250 B.c., by Philippus, under the
title of Hieroglyphica of Horapollon,? gives us in
two books the symbolic explanation of 189 hiero-
glyphics. Many of these interpretations are true:

’

for example, a stem represents the year; a goose,

* Fragments of Cheremon were found by Birch ina compilation
made by the Byzantine monk Tzetzes, about 1000 A.D.

See the edition of the Hieroglyphica by Leemans, Leyden,
1836.

%

The Reading of Hieroglyphics 253

the word son; a hawk stands for mother; an ostrich
feather symbolises justice. But it is self-evident
that the small number of signs explained by
Horapollon would be of little service to the
moderns in their attempts at deciphering.

Hieroglyphics did not consist of symbols only.
Clement of Alexandria, one of the most learned
scholars among the Church Fathers, leaves a
valuable testimony to this at the end of the first
century, at a time when many Egyptians still
made use of hieroglyphics.

At the outset Clement formulates with pre-
cision the fact that there are various writings, in
the following terms: ‘‘The Egyptian pupils are
first taught epistolography, the writing reserved
for ordinary intercourse (now termed demotic) ; next
they are taught the hieratic style which is employed
by the sacred scribes or hierographers; lastly
hieroglyphics.”’ Unfortunately, the author omits
to state, what would have been of considerable
import to the decipherers, whether these three
modes of writing, which we call to-day demotic,
hieratic, hieroglyphic, made use of three different
types of characters or were modifications of one
common one. This omission made Egyptian
script, according to Clement, appear still more

254. Kings and Gods of Egypt

complex than according to Herodotus or Diodorus,
_ since he introduced a third form of character, the
hieratic, by the side of the demotic and the
hieroglyphic.

But Clement adds puzzle to puzzle by the
explanation he gives of the hieroglyphic script,
properly so called. ‘‘There are two kinds of
hieroglyphics; the one is cyriologic (by that is
meant signs used with their proper, non-figura-
tive meaning) and employs the first alphabetical
letters; the other is symbolic.”’

Clement says nothing more about the cyriologi-
cal hieroglyphs. We must wait for Champollion
to explain to us the riddle of ‘‘the first alphabetical
letters.”” But he enters into details concerning
the symbolic hieroglyphics. |

The symbolic hieroglyphs are written in many
ways. The first expresses objects by their graphic
representation. Thus: when the Egyptians wish to
write the sun, they draw a circle; to write the moon
they draw a crescent.

The second method expresses the object in a tropi-
cal (figurative) form. This tropical method changes
or deviates the meaning of objects by the employ-
ment of analogy, and expresses them by modifying
or transforming their image in various ways. Thus
they make use of anaglyphs when they want to sing
the praises of their kings under the guise of religious
myths.

The Reading of Hieroglyphics 255

The third method consists entirely of allegories
expressed by certain enigmas. Here is an example of
such an enigmatic allusion: The Egyptians represent
all the other stars by serpents, on account of their
oblique course, but the sun is represented by a scarab."

Clement’s testimony brings forward a point
of cardinal importance. He makes us under-
stand—though in obscure terms—that the hiero-
glyphic signs are not exclusively, as Cheremon
and Horapollon seemed to believe, ideographs and
symbols. Asign may bea letter; it may stand for
an object; or it may convey a symbolic meaning
by direct or indirect allusion. The problem is thus
stated in all its complexity. But if this passage |
of the Stromateis—which was not understood—
set forth the difficulties of the problem, it” gave
no clue to its solution. These difficulties may be
summed up in three questions:

1. Is the Egyptian language, in its threefold
script, one or complex?

2. How are we to distinguish the three values,
—alphabetical, ideographical, and symbolical,—_
represented by the signs?

3. When the value of the signs has been as-
certained, with what sounds are they read; how

t Stromateis (ap. Champollion, Précis du systéme hiéro-
glyphique (1824), p. 328)

256 Kings and Gods of Egypt

can we separate the sentences, isolate the words,
and distinguish grammatical forms and functions?

Towards the end of the Renaissance, a few
curious minds, following the lead of the archzolo-
gists and philologists who had laboured upon the
monuments of classical antiquity, applied them-
selves to the examination of the Sphinx of Egypt.
The Jesuit Father, Kircher, at the beginning of
the seventeenth century, attempted to revive
the study of the Coptic language. It was some-
thing more than luck; rather was it genius which
revealed to him that, hidden under its guise of a
Greek spelling and writing, Coptic continued the
old Egyptian language. He discovered that
Copti¢ is not only related to the ancient mother
tongue of Egypt, but springs from it, is, indeed,
but a later form of it, transcribed into Greek
writing. But it was not possible to go back from
Coptic to the old mother tongue, as we can, for
instance, from French to Latin, until the phonetic
reading of the hieroglyphic was known. And the
key to this mysterious writing was lost. Working
on the suggestions of Horapollon, Kircher sought
for, or divined, ideas, but not sounds, in the hiero-
glyphics. Trusting to his own perspicuity, he
read into the signs what he wanted them to Say.

The Reading of Hieroglyphics 257

For instance, on the Pamphilian obelisk the
Emperor Domitian is given simply the Greek
title of Awtocrator expressed in hieroglyphics, but
Kircher translated it :“‘ Osiris is the agent of fruit-
fulness and of vegetation, and this creative power
was a gift from Heaven conferred upon him during
his reign by the holy Mophta.”’

Such a guess-work system proved more harmful
to Egyptology than serviceable, and it was not
until the end of the eighteenth century that criti-
cal methods were employed by De Guignes and
Zoega. De Guignes, comparing the Egyptian
hieroglyphic with the Chinese characters, traced
in the Egyptian the existence of determinative
chatacters, that is, of ideograms without phonetic
value, used at the end of words to ‘‘determine”’
and define their general meaning. The Dane,
Zoega, opposing Kircher’s system, showed that
hieroglyphics more often stood for sounds and
that they should be regarded as mere letters,
instead of each sign being made the symbol of a
mysterious language, the vehicle of transcendental
ideas.

About the same time, interest was aroused in
Europe by the Egyptian monuments brought
thither. The French and German art critics—

Caylus and Winckelmann—discuss the Egyptian
17

258 Kings and Gods of Egypt

obelisks and statuary in their Collections of Anti-
quities. The store of hieroglyphic inscriptions
began to increase, owing to the travels in the East
of men like Paul Lucas (1603), Norden (1741),
Pocoke (1743), and Niebuhr (1788), who made
collections on the spot; but as yet the texts were
not properly understood and the copies of them
were so faulty that to-day they are almost useless;
but they reveal how Egypt exercised a fascination
upon the minds of men, and how they were attract-
ed to her by the mystery of her inscriptions and
the beauty of her monuments. In 1798, when
Bonaparte entered upon his military campaign in
Egypt, he took with him a scientific commission,
including scholars, artists, and surveyors, to
whom was entrusted the charge of drawing, sur-
veying, and studying tombs and temples. When
Egypt was conquered, Bonaparte established in
Cairo, side by side with the civil and military
authorities, an Egyptian Academy—L’ Institut d’
Egypte—to maintain the principle that in this
illustrious land, science, no less than politics, had a
vast and invaluable conquest to achieve. During
the three years of the French occupation, scholars
like Jomard and De Villiers drew up, amid great
difficulties but with indomitable enthusiasm and
perseverance, an inventory of the archeological

The Reading of Hieroglyphics 259

treasures of Egypt. In 1808, after the scholars
of the Egyptian Institute had been driven out of
the Nile Valley, they began to publish the results.
of their labours in that magnificent Description of
Egypt, which provides a land-survey of its ancient
and modern monuments, and which, even to-day,
affords an inexhaustible mine of information.

In the month of August, 1799, a man in Bona-
parte’sarmy, Bouchard, a Captain of the Engineers,
found near Rosetta, a basalt stele, on which three
inscriptions were engraved: one in pictorial signs,
another in lineal signs, the third in Greek charac-
ters. The Greek text stated that here were three
versions—in hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek—
of a decree of the Egyptian priests in honour of
Ptolemy Epiphany and his wife Cleopatra in 196
B.C. The top of the tablet, bearing a part of the
hieroglyphic text, had been broken away, but still
there was an Egyptian inscription in two writings;
the meaning was clear by the key that the Greek
afforded; it remained to analyse and decipher the
unknown scripts.

It was the demotic to which scholars first turned
their attention, probably because its cursive char-
acters, with their resemblance to Arabic, are more
in accord with our habitual conception of writing

260 Kings and Gods of Egypt

than the pictorial signs. As early as 1802 the great
French Orientalist, Silvestre de Sacy, demonstrat-
ed that demotic was a practical and popular
form of writing which contained no ‘‘riddles”’ and
in which the signs, purely alphabetical and not
ideographic, stood for letters, that is, for sounds—
a theory that was only half-true. He classified
all the forms of signs and reduced them to an
alphabet of twenty-five demotic letters; next he
endeavoured to distinguish in his text groups of
similar signs forming words that occurred repeated-
ly in the text. Guided by the Greek, Sacy suc-
ceeded in finding out approximately in the demotic
the place of the royal names, and in reading
Ptolemy, Berenice, Alexander, Arsinoe. But such
a method was too mechanical not to bring errors in
its train. Thus Sacy interpreted the circle within
which the royal names are inscribed as a letter.
The Swedish scholar Ackerblad‘in pointing out this
mistake fell into another, when he interpreted
this graphic ornament as a definite article.

A period of seventeen years followed these
researches before an Englishman, Dr. Thomas
Young, attacked the hieroglyphic portion of the

t Lettre au citoyen Chaptal, 1802.

' Lettre sur l’ inscription égyptienne du monument de Rosette,
1802,

The Reading of Hieroglyphics 261

inscription. Pursuing the methods of Sacy and
Ackerblad, who had first identified names of
persons in the demotic text, being guided thereto
by the positions of their Greek equivalents, Dr.
Young identified portions of the two royal names:
Ptolmis-Ptolemy and Birniks-Berenice, in attri-
buting to the signs the following values:

.

Pt....0olemaeosh Birene,s...ke....

It must be remarked that in the two names many
signs were not identified. Young dismissed these
as superfluous or inexplicable, which amounts to a
confession of the failure of the mechanical method.
Young was not successful with other royal names.
Where there stood Evergetes and Autocrator, he
read Cesar and Arsinoe. As another English
scholar put it, ‘‘ Young proceeded by induction and
clung with blind obstinacy to a faulty hypothesis. ’”’

At last appeared a Frenchman of genius, Jean
Frangois Champollion (born in 1791), who bor-
rowing from his predecessors, Zoega, De Sacy,
Ackerblad, and Young, “‘his first exact notions,”
discovered almost at one stroke the correct solu-
tion of all the different elements of the problem.
As a schoolboy he had devoted himself with
passion to the study of Coptic, and now, recog-

t See Account of Discoveries in Hieroglyphical Literature, 1823.

262 Kings and Gods of Egypt

nising the profundity of Kircher’s inspiration that
Coptic was the Egyptian language in disguise,
he sought to find, behind the mask of the Greek
alphabet, the phonetic reading of the Egyptian
words.

However, until 1821, Champollion held hiero-
glyphic writing to be symbolic, and not alphabetic.
But between the years 1821 and 1822 he changed
his opinion, perhaps under the influence of the
results obtained by Young in the reading of royal
names. The new discovery of a bilingual inscrip-
tion was also a determining factor. In January,
1822, the French scholars learned of a hieroglyphic
text inscribed on the base of a little obelisk in
Philz, which had already supplied a Greek inscrip-
tion. Champollion first concentrated his examina-
tion upon the hieroglyphics that were surrounded
by a cartouche co, for Zoega had demonstrated
that the cartouche appertains only to royal names.
These names, according to the Greek text, were
Cleopatra and Ptolemy. The names had three
signs in common, and Champollion inferred that
these common signs ought to stand for the letters
ptt which occur in both cartouches. This
established Young’s theory that the characters
with which royal names are written correspond to
alphabetical letters and have no symbolic value.

The Reading of Hieroglyphics 263

This theory that Young discovered by chance
received scientific demonstration from Champol-
lion. There flashed upon his mind that obscure
statement of Clement of Alexandria: ‘“‘A kind of
hieroglyphic, called cyriologic, employs the first
alphabetical letters; the other kind is symbolic.”’
Another scholar, Letronne, helped him to interpret
these words. Since Young and Champollion had
proved the royal names to be written in signs
that were not symbolical, it followed that they
were cyriological. The next step for Champol-
lion to discover was for what “‘first letters’”’ the
hieroglyphs composing the names Cleopatra and
Ptolemy should stand. He judged it was necessary
to establish what was the object imitated or re-
presented by each sign. He identified this object,
then looked for its name in Coptic. Then he
discovered that every phonetic hieroglyph stood
for the sound of the first letter of the Egyptian or
Coptic word.*

«Cf. Champollion, Précis du systéme hiéroglyphique (1824):
“Any phonetic hierogylph is the picture of an object the name of
which, in the spoken Egyptian, began with the utterance, the
articulation of the very sound that the sign itself was meant to
represent.” Letronne, who, on behalf of Champollion, com-
mented upon Clement of Alexandria, translated the ‘‘cyriologic”’
signs thus: ‘“‘characters used for expressing objects in their proper
meaning by means of the first alphabetic letters.”

But what kind of first letters? Letronne suggested, from a
text of Plutarch, that Clement meant hieroglyphic signs corre-

264 Kings and Gods of Egypt

I give below an example to illustrate Champol-
lion’s method of decipherment, as Birch has
already done:

1. The first sign in the cartouche of Cleopatra
is the figure of a knee, in Coptic, ‘‘kelle” or “‘keli”’;
K should therefore be the initial of the name and
it does not occur in Ptolemy.

2. Thesecond sign, a crouching lion, in Egypt-

b bl

ian, “labou,” in Coptic, “laboi;> as an Ly siti

sponding to the sounds of the first sixteen letters of the Greek
alphabet. Though Champollion refers to the authority of
Letronne, his own understanding of Clement’s text is different;
for him the words 6a rév mpwétwv croxelwyv designate merely the
initial letters of certain Egyptian words which served to form
the Egyptian phonetic alphabet (cf. Grammaire, p. 28). This
interpretation was supported by Goulianoff (Essai sur les hiéro-
glyphes, 1827); but the Russian thought erroneously that by this
system he would be able to read most of the hieroglyphs. Klap-
roth translated with exactness the passage of the Stromatets by:
“cyriologic by means of initial letters” and built up a theory of
“acrologic’’ signs in which by the side of the correct views he
placed certain errors, exposed by Champollion (‘‘Premiére et
deuxiéme lettre sur la découverte des hiéroglyphes acrologiques,”’
1827, Bulletin universel des sciences, April, 1827).

The Reading of Hieroglyphics 265

found, with this value, in the fourth place in the
name Ptolemy (Young read the lion as ole).

3. The third sign, a reed in Coptic,
stands for E (A) in Cleopatra and occurs in the

ac ”

ake,

sixth and seventh places in Ptolemy (Ptolmais)
where it represents a diphthong: AJ or AIO.

4. The fourth sign, a kind of knot, stands for
O in Cleopatra, and serves the same purpose in the
third place in Ptolemy (Young considered this a
“superfluous” sign).

5. The fifth sign, a mat, which stands for F
in Cleopatra, is the first letter in Ptolemy.

6. The sixth sign, an eagle, in Coptic, ‘‘ahom,”’
does not occur in Ptolemy, but it occurs again for
A in the sixth and ninth place in Cleopatra.

7. The seventh sign which represents a hand,
in Coptic, “‘toot,’’ stands, certainly, for T in
Cleopatra, though it is not to be found in Ptolemy.
Champollion had already recognised the existence
of “homophones,” that is, of different signs bearing
the same reading.

8. The eighth sign is a mouth, in Coptic “70.4
it fulfils the function of the consonant R.

9. The ninth sign repeats the eagle A, already
explained.

to-11. Finally, the segment ® second sign
in Ptolemy and the egg e, which often occur

266 Kings and Gods of Egypt

together # ® at the end of feminine names seemed

phonetic purpose in the word Cleopatra. The #,
an index of the feminine, corresponds to the /, femi-
nine article in Coptic. The egg is a determinative
sign of the feminine gender.

Thus all the signs, except the M and the S, had
been identified in their regular sequence, and it
was as legitimate, as easy, to assign the values
M and S to the two signs (<= and fl) that
remain unidentified.

In his Lettre d M. Dacier, secretary to L’Acadé-
mie des Inscriptions (1822), Champollion pub-
lished the result of his methodical analysis, so
different from the hazardous and mechanical
method practised by Dr. Young. On other points
also he broke away from his predecessors; he no
longer regarded demotic as a different script from
the hieratic and hieroglyphic, he regarded it rather
as a true ‘‘tachigraphy of the hieroglyphic.’’ The
conclusions already reached by Sacy and Young
were that in the demotic text signs expressed
sounds not ideas. If it were true that demotic
was but a cursive derivation from the hieroglyphic,
the latter would include with ideograms, signs
standing for sounds; in a word, there would be
phonetic hieroglyphs. Moreover, the monuments

-The Reading of Hieroglyphics 267

of the Greeco-Roman period bore the names of the
Ptolemies and the Cesars, of which we know the
sound. If, now, in these names written in hiero-
glyphics, the same sounds were found always to
be represented by the same letters, this phonetic
alphabet would be proved correct, as already in
the cartouches of Cleopatra and Ptolemy. By
this method, Champollion read seventy-nine
royal names, in which, in contrast to Young, he
succeeded in interpreting every letter. With the
aid of this list, Champollion was able, at one
stroke, to draw up an almost definitive alphabet
of phonetic hieroglyphs.

Thus far, Champollion had confined his study
to royal names and particularly those of the
Greco-Roman period. He and others were stub-
bornly prepossessed by the idea that the names
of the Ptolemies and the Caesars were written in
alphabetic signs because the Egyptian scribes
knew no other way to transcribe foreign names
from a language which possessed no ideographs.
But, it was urged, the real national Egyptian
language would surely employ only symbolic
characters, such as Clement of Alexandria opposes
to the cyriologic signs. Champollion, however,
abandoned that attitude.

268 Kings and Gods of Egypt

A glance at the Rosetta stone shows that most of
the hieroglyphs that compose the greater part of the
Egyptian inscription are the same as also compose
the names of foreign rulers and they are grouped in
different ways. For instance, the cartouche sur-
rounding the name of Ptolemy contains the group
pe § & il in which the first two signs are the first two
hieroglyphs of the name of Pfolemy, that is P and T.
But the Greek version contains the epithet jyantwevog
bn tod OO “beloved of Phtah”’ (Coptic, Ptah); hence
it follows that the third hieroglyph § represents H.?

Acting on this principle, Champollion read a
certain number of words, of which he found the
meaning and phonetic equivalents in Coptic. He
was thus able to compile, beside the alphabet, the
first dictionary of hieroglyphs and a grammar? of
the Egyptian language, deduced from Coptic.

Following the guidance of his genius, and pur-
suing this method of scientific analysis, Champol-
lion advanced by giant strides along the unbeaten
track. The vista, opened out to him, was far
wider than he had at first imagined it would be.
Contrary to his earlier theory, he discovered that
the phonetic hieroglyphs were not an invention for
the transcription of the names of foreign sover-
eigns, but had been in use, since the remotest

* The vowel a is not accounted for; the vowels not being written
in Egyptian.
? The Grammar was published in 1836; the Dictionary in 1841.

_The Reading of Hieroglyphics 269

times. The name Khoufou (Greek, Cheops), the
builder of the Great Pyramid, was written at the
time of the IVth dynasty with the very same
alphabetical signs. Thus, not only a portion of
Egyptian antiquity, but the whole of Egyptian
civilisation with its innumerable documents, was
an open book in which he could read. He held
the key which gave him access to its language at
every stage of its development, at all periods of its
existence. By the aid of the Coptic language, as
codified in dictionaries and lexicons, he had been
able to trace many words back to their roots, and
so arrive at their original meaning. Thus he was
able to divide the hieroglyphic text into separate
words and to identify grammatical forms. Then
the hieroglyphic language stood revealed in all its
fulness, with the fourfold value of its hieroglyphs as-
letters, or alphabetical signs, as syllables, or syllabic
signs, as summarised ideas, or ideographic signs,
and lastly its signs added to the ends of words to
define their exact meaning, or determinative signs.

Thus, within ten years, Champollion had sur-
veyed the whole subject and had resolved its
various problems. He had demonstrated how the
threefold script, demotic, hieratic, hieroglyphic,
sprang from one common stock of picture-writing.

270 Kings and Gods of Egypt

From the chaos of pictorial signs, he had separated
the alphabet, the symbols, the determinatives.
His thorough knowledge of Coptic illuminated for
him the obscure cyriologic process alluded to by
Clement of Alexandria, and enabled him to turn
back to the original sources of the Egyptian gram-
mar and vocabulary. The whole range of science
offers few other examples of a system built up
from the base so completely, so unhesitatingly,
and bearing upon it the stamp of truth and genius.

France realised the importance of the discovery
and began the purchase of important archeological
collections! as a basis for a department of Egyptian
Antiquities in the Louvre. Champollion was
appointed Keeper (1826), and he wrote a brief
catalogue, a masterpiece of erudition for a science
in its infancy. France thus endowed Egypto-
logy with a museum which could be used as a
practical laboratory. There still remained the
work of resuming direct relations with Egypt
that had been broken by the failure of Bona-

t Report to the Duke of Doudeauville upon the Egyptian
collection purchased by order of H. M. at Livourne by M.
Champollion, Junior (1826). The King of Sardinia had already
organised a remarkable Egyptian Museum in Turin by the
purchase of Drovetti’s collection, which Champollion visited in
Italy in order to test and improve his system of deciphering by the
aid of the monuments themselves (Lettres @ M. le Duc de Blacas,
1824 and 1826). ;

‘The Reading of Hieroglyphics 271 |

parte’s expedition. Champollion went to Egypt,
explored the banks of the Nile, visited all accessible
monuments, drew up a prodigious quantity of
plans, and copied innumerable inscriptions during
the months from August, 1828, to March, 1830.
On his return, he was elected a member of the
Académie des Inscriptions, and a professorship
was founded for him at the Collége de France.
But he delivered only a few lectures. Exhausted
by his labours, he died on March 12, 1831, leaving
“as his visiting-card to posterity,’’ to quote his
own words, his Grammar and Egyptian Dictionary
and the Notes written during his travels. *

It was by a miracle alone that Egyptology,
after the death of its founder, escaped being
wrecked by the heinous detraction of the classical
scholars. For fifteen years, its only opportunity
for development was through the efforts of a few
Orientalists, who, converted to the views of the
master, tried to carry on his work: in France,
Nestor Lhéte, Charles Lenormant, J. J. Ampére;
in Italy, Rosellini and Ungarelli; in Holland,
Leemans; in England, Wilkinson, Hincks, and
Birch; in Germany, Lepsius. The greatest of

t The publication of Les Monuments de l Egypte et de la Nubie
in two series, 4 vols. in folio of plates, and 2 vols. of Notes begun
in 1835.

a

272 Kings and Gods of Egypt

these was Lepsius, who led a memorable expedi-
tion to Egypt. The researches of Birch enlarged
greatly the known vocabulary. At last, in 1846,
came the man, whom all Egyptologists should,
without national prejudice, regard as the veritable
successor of Champollion—the Viscount Emmanuel
de Rougé.

Under him Egyptology was again carried on
with scientific discipline. In a letter to one of his
disciples, Francois Chabas,' who, later, made for
himself a name great in Egyptology, De Rougé
thus defined the work that confronted them:
“The completion of the Grammar and the Dic-
tionary by a more rigorous method of investigation.
In order to ascertain the meaning of a word, you
must make this word explain itself in every passage
in which it is found.”” This “long and arduous”
test enabled De Rougé to publish critical editions
of texts in which each word was discussed and
studied so exhaustively that seven lines of an
inscription required two hundred pages of explana-
tion. But, by means of this method, the meaning
of the words was established with such certainty
that, even to-day, we find few details to correct in
the texts translated by De Rougé.

*Upon De Rougé, Mariette, and Chabas, see Notices bio-
graphiques (Bibliotheque égyptologique, t. ix, xviii, xxi).

The Reading of Hieroglyphics 273

The new master had not yet seen Egypt, and he
felt that the explorations that had proved so
fruitful to his predecessors should be resumed.

Meanwhile, another Frenchman, Auguste
Mariette, had made for himself a name in Egypt
by the discovery, near Memphis, south-west of
Cairo, of the Serapeum, the monuments of which
went to enrich the Louvre. He had interested the
Khedive in the protection and the maintaining
of the monuments and had been appointed
Director of Archeological Works. He also found-
ed a Museum at Boulak, which, to-day, is housed
in Cairo. It was high time for intervention; the
archeological campaigns of European scholars,
and the traffic of the dealers in antiquities threat-
ened to become more injurious to the monuments
than the ravages of centuries. Mariette was
entering upon a more methodical system of exca-
vation and was already engaged in the publication
of the more important documents when De Rougé
arrived in Egypt. Can we realise the enthusiasm
of the great scholar, prepared for his exploration
by years of arduous labour in the privacy of his
study, to whom the Egyptian tongue had revealed
all its secrets, when he came face to face with the
monuments and read the history recorded on their
stones? De Rougé and his companions spent five

18

274 Kings and Gods of Egypt

months copying, photographing, collecting inscrip-
tions, Mariette accompanying them everywhere,
‘placing himself, his skilled men, and his time at
their disposal.’’ It was only when he was over-
come by illness, consequent upon his labours, that
De Rougé returned to France.

No more than Champollion did his span of life
permit him to co-ordinate for posterity all the
intuitions and certitudes gained during his journey
in Egypt. Nevertheless, his work was accomplish-
ed. His methodical researches, his vigorous
translations revealed to the scientific world the
vast scope and consequence of Champollion’s
discovery and compelled it to abandon its sceptical
attitude. In France and elsewhere, it had been
contended that hieroglyphics would never supply
other material than royal names, dates, funeral
formule, and prayers to the gods, and that the
language was unfitted for literary or poetical
purposes.

But the works of De Rougé and his contempor-
aries—Chabas, Devéria, De Horrack, in France;
Heinrich Brugsch and J. Dimichen in Germany;
Lepage-Renouf and Goodwin in England demon-
strated step by step what an immense field of
knowledge the deciphering of hieroglyphics had
opened up to mankind.

The Reading of Hieroglyphics 275

It is not my purpose to quote the names of the
Egyptian scholars of our own day, but I may
briefly sum up the results thus far obtained.

In the domain of philology, Egyptian has proved
to be a language related to the Semitic stock, but
bearing African grafts, and its unbroken course
can be traced—an almost solitary example—for
over forty centuries, from the rudimentary
morphology of primitive times down to the
Coptic, alive beneath its mask of Greek.

In the domain of epigraphy, it has caused the
problem of the origin of writing to come again
under discussion. Whence and how did writing
originate? What were the stages of its evolution?
Did man start with ‘‘ideographs ”’.—picture-writing
—and deform the pictorial signs till they deterio-
rated into conventional letters? At what stage of
development, and under what form did the Phceni-
cians borrow from Egypt an alphabet so serviceable
that it is still, with very slight modifications, in
use among the white races to-day?

But the domain most enriched by the discover-
ies of Egyptology is that of history, where the
horizon suddenly receded four or five thousand
years beyond the Homeric Age. Above all its
other qualifications, Egypt possesses that of
providing an uninterrupted series of documents

{

276 Kings and Gods of Egypt

from the Neolithic times to those of the Graco-
Roman civilisation. We observe in her history
the beginnings of tribal life; of family life focussed
in the tombs of its ancestors; the process of cen-
tralisation and the hegemony of one chief—the
Pharaoh. We further see how Pharaoh, in his
cumulative capacity of son of the gods, patron
of the family cult, high-priest of the temple,
mediator between gods and men, was able to
consolidate his rule; how this concentration of
power in one hand brought about a royal absolut-
ism, out of which grew in later times the theory
of an omnipotent, providential State in which the
sovereign is the master, protector, and father of
his subjects: how this ideal was further developed
in the Roman Empire and found its last expression
in modern Ceesarism.

In addition to history properly so-called, Egypt
supplies information upon public and civil law,
land tenure, and rights of property from archaic
times, in documents which are not only numerous
and legible, but of convincing reliability, owing to
the designs and pictures with which they are
illustrated. Of the life led by the prehistoric
Egyptians during the Vth, XIIth, and XVIIIth
dynasties, 3000, 2000, and 1500 years before Christ,
we learn more every day, the garments they wore,

The Reading of Hieroglyphics 277

the avocations they followed, their pleasures, their
sorrows, —we know them all; we can form of them,
not only an idea but a picture, more minute,
accurate, and vivid in its details, than if we should
endeavour to visualise to ourselves the same con-
ditions in England or France in the time of Charle-
magne, or even in a more recent period. The old
rulers of Egypt we know better than our own
kings; we know them in spirit and body, through
their mummies and monuments which have been
brought into the light of day. We are under the
spell of a vast reach of civilisation revealed by
tangible testimonies; here history is not established
by abstract statements and scanty memorials;
the documents conjure up the vision of the events
themselves. The facts are actualised for us in their
native atmosphere; the dead have come to life
again upon the walls of their tombs, amidst the
accustomed surroundings of their earthly homes,
and they tell their own story to us, themselves.

Furthermore, Egyptian history is so intermin-
gled with that of other nations, Syrians, Israelites,
Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, that any new hiero-
glyphic text brought to light may be expected to
supply fresh information on the history of the East.
For instance, from one inscription, we read of the
treaty of peace concluded between Ramses II and

278 Kings and Gods of Egypt

the princes of Asia Minor; from another, of the
presence of the tribes of Israel in Syria; from
another, of the campaigns of Ramses III against
the “‘ peoples of the sea,’’ among whom are named
the ancestors of the Sardinians, Achwans, and
Sicilians. Although the documents are still silent
upon the journeyings of the Israelites in Egypt and
upon the influenceof the Egyptian civilisation upon
the Mosaic literature—a subject which arouses
such passionate inquiry—they have thrown an
unexpected light upon the life and customs of
Syria in the fifteenth century B.C. as is seen in the
diplomatic correspondence of the Pharaohs dis-
covered at El-Amarna. And if we come to the
Greco-Roman period of Egyptian civilisation,
what precious treasures have recently come to
light in the Greek papyri, written in Egypt:
fragments of Greek tragedies, comedies of Menan-
der, legal deeds, thousands of pages of family
archives, to which should be added magic texts,
religious hymns, popular legends, private and
official correspondence, treatises on medicine and
mathematics—memorials of every kind, written in
demotic or hieratic on papyri of an earlier period.
Mommsen, therefore, considering these papyri as
sources of history, no less valuable than records
on stone, could rightly prophesy that after our

The Reading of Hieroglyphics 279

century of epigraphy, ‘‘the twentieth century
would be the century of papyrology.’’

A fresh incentive was also given to research in
another field, that of religious history. Herod-
otus says the Egyptians were the most religious
of men. No other people allows us to follow the
evolution of religious feeling throughout a period
of the length of four thousand years, and by means
of such testimonies as pictures still extant in their
temples, and rituals inscribed on their papyri.
Not only does Egypt offer a most fruitful field for
the examination of the origin of metaphysical
beliefs, that she may lend her aid to their solution.
She seems to verify the words of Fustel de Cou-
langes: ‘‘ Death was the first mystery and it led
men into the way of all the other mysteries.”
To elude definitive death; to continue this earthly
life in another world; to force a way by the help of
magic into the world beyond,—such appear to
have been the aspirations of the primitive Egypt-
ians. Next was evolved the conception of a God,
who is a Saviour and Redeemer, Osiris, who,
yielding himself up unto death, opened the way of
Eternal Life to men and transformed Death into
Victory. Finally, Osiris the Saviour develops
into Osiris the Judge, who weighs the hearts of
men and admits to immortality only those who,

280 Kings and Gods of Egypt

like him, were righteous. We know how these
ideas reacted upon the Graeco-Roman world and
how they prepared the way for Christianity.

And lastly, in the domain of art, it should be
remembered, how ancient Egypt by her monu-
ments alone, apart from any understanding of her
script, which, here, is superfluous, has influenced
powerfully the other nations in antiquity.
No other country possessed to the same degree
a style so entirely original, for her style was the
outcome of her religious feelings. Art was in
Egypt something more than an esthetic mani-
festation, a fanciful creation of the mind, or the
expression of a heart moved by Beauty, and there-
fore varying with temperament, liable to external
influences. In Egypt, the plan and dimensions of
the monuments, the idealistic or realistic rendering
of a statue or bas-relief, the decoration of an
edifice, even the shape and the details of a jewel,
were controlled by a religious belief, ordained by
a superstition. If a jewel is primarily a fetish,
a magic charm, a magic contrivance of safety, and
only secondarily an ornament, an article of attire,
much more is a temple, a statue, a decoration, any
work of art, an act of faith, the expression of a reli-
gious belief, the observance ofarite. Thus, tracing
back artistic inspiration to its primitive source,

The Reading of Hieroglyphics 281

we see that it is owing to her primeval creed and
the force of her religious sentiment that Egypt has
been able, throughout so many centuries, to main-
tain her art original, intact, aloof from foreign
influence

Such, in brief, is the civilisation whose title-deeds
have been restored to the archives of mankind
by the genius of Champollion. Despite the efforts
of the little group who followed in the footsteps of
the master, Egypt is still an unexploited field.
The landmarks set up by the first pioneers only
serve to point out what an immense unknown tract
extends before them. If worked with adequate
forces, this prodigious field of research would yield
more bounteous harvest than was ever reaped on
the banks of the Nile. But the labourers in it are
few. Vita brevis, ars longa. May the students of
our coming generation hearken to our call! May
they come in numbers, and _ whole-heartedly
devote themselves to a task which shall reward
them a hundred-fold and give to them a joy
exceeding their highest hopes, if, like the initiate
to the worship of Isis, they draw near to the hidden
truths with their ‘“‘inmost soul.”

ny" o Litiat et

i
ae
ym
>
es
; I
va
ok
‘ ASS
a
i
- eet

A MORET. KINGS AND GODS OF EGYPT.

26 28 30 32 3% 36 38 40 42 29
r ; \ | {- | MEMPHIS
CARTE UW ET LES PYRAMIDES
- = Abouroasch =
— —30
| D’ EGYPTErrASIE SIE OCCIDEN TALE | Nara raided here
Echelle 1:8000.000 : | |" ~Sinennnos) creer
0 100 200 300 400 500 Kil. guphrate Al facial a yan 2) Suef ‘
ati VI? Dynastie:Sakkarah «s)\ pmphis
| j Dahchour ** : ,
| [saat
D> | | el
NAHARA
| S |
_—— | | =, |
= J / MITAN\NI oe
——= Tounipou — ;
——_— + aa fe its |
= = 5 Fae —— 8 a A Ss BY eA \
$ |
=== SS A By Assour | \
— LA A 9.4 | |
eee si) | |
— S 4) = | \ |
5 : ~ ©Qodshou } ae
Ss | ae
= 2 = r= 4 mat ell | \
a | if
| | |
| KARDO) ie 2s |
f | Babylone’ SRS 7, ia
| ee %
= == if, i ee
\ <
S| = = 2s
| 9.
S33 . | £9 773
| —
| ubaktis =
10
30 ©Héliopo | =
} emphis bs 4 . |
idou .
FA nate |
; >
DESER =
clé
DE Lip QPolis ae
Fen
28 DESERT
Hermopolis b
Tol) el Ama fk
Sioubh, 42 AlBIO V. Ky
oD dineh a
oA Cee eas eo :
| yA
3 :
i ydos : eneh -
: jena Coptos
j a == ——+
| Théb 7; arna ==
Hermonthi Louxor
_ Esne
Hiéraconpalis Se El Kab
} Edfou : =
XL Silsileh ==
3 pKom-Ombo |. \ = THEBES
24 |.Eléphantineb/‘SSouan Echelle 1: 160.000
“Cataracte ee 2°38 4 5
5a a5 a 3h 36

G.P.PUTNAM’S SONS—NEW-YORK AND LONDON

0 Lepage. del*

; ‘

marine 6 cin neem ee 4

~ Pa

INDEX

A
Abousir, 2
Abydos, temple, 9, 100
Achilles, Shield of, decora-

tions of Egyptian origin,

230, 231, 241, 247, 249
Ackerblad, Swedish scholar,

interpreter of hieroglyphics,

260

Adventures of Sinouhit, The,
200-202

Zineid, on judgment, 123, 130

Agricultural legends, 104-106

Ahmasi, Queen, wife of Thot-
mes I, 12, 28; union with
Amon-R4A, 18-19; bas-relief
of accouchement of, 20

Ahmes I, victories, 43

Alasia, country of, 211

Amélineau, 100

Amenemhait, overseer of the
flocks, 60

Amenemhait I, 200, 204

Amenemheb, officer of Thot-
mes III, 205, 206

Amenmes, 12

Amenophis II, 206

Amenophis IV, religious re-
volution of, 41 ff.; divine
origin, 42; appearance, 45;
parentage, 46; character, 47;
changes his name, 49; rela-
tion to Aton, 52; builds
temples to Aton, 52, 54;
relations with priesthood,
45, 53; Reformer of the
Faith, 54; in favour with
the people, 55; Khounaton’s
Hymn, 55-58; encourages

e
realistic art, 65; statue of,
66; death, 67; influence, 68

Ammouianashi, Prince of To-
nou, 200

““Amon, gardens of,” 8, 37

“Amon of the Ways,” 212

Amon-R&, 16, 24, 69; union
with Queen Ahmasi, 18 ff;
priesthood of, 24, 35, 44, 45»
48, 50, 53; disestablishment
of, 41 ff.; union with Queen
Moutemoua, 42; relations
with Kings of Egypt, 43, 44;
worship of, forbidden, 49, 51;
name effaced on monuments,
49, 51, 60; hymns to, 61;
influence on Theban artists,
65; worship of, restored, 67;
statue of, 212

Ampére, J. J. 271

Animals representing gods, 69

Anna, on the situation in
Egypt at the death of
Thotmes III, 32

Anti-feminist party, in Egypt,
16

Antiquities, in the Louvre, 270

Anubis, 78, 162; chapels of,
4, 9, 30; wars, 77

Apuleius, 154; on festival of
Navigium Isidis, 165

Art, Theban school, 65;
Egyptian, 230-246, 280

Asia, travels of Egyptians in,
199 ff.

Ati, 36

Aton, worship of, substituted
for worship of Amon, 41 ff.;
how represented, 51; rela-
tion to Khounaton, 52, 64;

283

284

Aton—Continued
temples and priesthood of,
52-54; hymns to, 55 ff., 61
Atoum, crowns Hatshopsitu,
22; prayers to, 60

B

Ba, the, soul-spirit, 115

Bakhtan, Princess of, story of,
207, 208

Baptism, Isiac, 181, 182

Bast, a god, 69

Beneventum, temple of Isis,
197

Beni-Hasan, hypogea of, 245

Bérard, Victor, 217, 219; Phe-
nicians and the Odyssey, 218

Birch, Samuel, 271

Bonaparte, establishes an
Egytian Academy, 258

Book of Respirations, 111

Book of the Dead, 140

Books of the Opening of the
Mouth, 88

Bouchard, discovery of the
Rosetta stone, 259

Boulak, Museum at, 273

Brotherhood of man, 63

Brugsch, Heinrich, 274

Brunn, on Shield of Achilles,
231, 247

Bubastis, festivals of, 93

Buddhism, idea of death and
judgment, 136

Byblos, 203, 205, 209; expedi-
tion to, 204

Cc

Caylus, 257

Chabas, Frangois, 208, 272,
274; on hymn to Osiris, 60

Champollion, Frangois, 254,
261 ff.; method of decipher-
ing hieroglyphics, 262 ff.;
results of his work published,
266; Grammar and Dic-
tionary of the Egyptian
language, 268, 271; keeper
of antiquities in the Louvre,

. Christianity and

Index

270; visit to Egypt and
death, 271

Cheremon, 255; dictionary of
hieroglyphics, 252

judgment,
138, 140

Cicero’s faith in Oriental mys-
teries, 194, 198

Clement of Alexandria, on
hieroglyphics, 253-255; Stro-
matets, 255

Coptic language, study of,
revived, 256; Champollion’s
use of, 263 ff.; Champollion’s

dictionary and grammar
of, 268, 271
“Corporeal soul,” 113
D

Davis, Theodore, excavations,
9,38,47 :

Death, Egyptians’ idea of, 111

Deir-el-Bahari, temple of, loca-
tion, I; antiquity, 2; appear-
ance and plan, 2-8; key to
reign of Hatshopsitu, 9, 11,
39; bas-reliefs and inscrip-
tions, 17 ff., 29 ff., 32 ff., 34
ff., 37, 39; “‘well,” 38

Democritus, dissertations on
hieroglyphics, 252

Demotic writing, 251, 253; on
Rosetta stone, 259; first
form of hieroglyphics to be
studied by scholars, 259,
260

Denderah, bas-reliefs, 84, 173

Description of Egypt, 1808, 259

Devéria, 274

De Witte, on psychostasy in
Homer, 123

Dialogues of the Dead, 131

Diodorus, on Osirian rites, 79,
106; on judgment of the
dead, 119

Diogenes Laertius, 252

Douait, a paradise, 117

“Double,” the, Egyptian con-
ception of the soul, 113 ff.

Dumichen, J., 274

Index

E

Egypt, conquests of, 8; in-
fluence in Italy, 152; rela-
tions with peoples of the
East, 277-278

Egyptian art, Theban school,
65; influence on Homer, 230
ff.; religious purpose of,
231; study of rural scenes,
231-246; and Egyptology,
280

Egyptian language, 251 ff.;
see also Coptic language.

Egyptian religion, rebirth in
Italy and Western Roman
empire, 148 ff.; influence on
Greek and Roman world,
151 ff.

Egyptian tales, adapted by
Greeks, 218

Egyptians, appreciation in
architecture, 6; opposition to
female Pharaoh, 28; legen-
dary travels in Asia, 199 ff.;
power in Lotanou and Kha-

rou, 205; relations with
peoples of Asia, 215
Egyptology, laboratory for,

270; developed through Ori-
entalists, 271; its service to
philology and _ epigraphy,
275; service to history, 275-
278; and law, land tenure,
property rights, 276; and
religious history, 279; and
art, 280

El-Amarna, school of, 62;
hymns of 59, 60, 68; letters
of, 204, 208, 278

El-Bersheh, hypogea of, 245

Eleusinian mysteries, 151, 180,
188, 190

Elysian Fields, 219

Epicureans, on judgment, 130

Evemerus of Messina, 100

‘“‘Bye of Horus,’”’ the, 97

F
Feast of the Fields, 83

285

Festival of all the Dead, 173

Festival of the Ship of Isis,
165, 170, 175

Festivals of Isiacs, 169 ff.

Fields of Ialou, 117, 219

Fields of Offerings, 117

Fields of Truth, 145

Firmicus Maternus, on Isiac
baptism, 182

France, interest in Egyptology,

270

Frazer, Professor J., on Osirian
legend, 100, 105

Future life, 114 ff.

G

Gardiner, Alan H., and Ad-
ventures of Sinouhit, 203

Geb, 69, 71; prayers to, 60;
in the passion of Osiris, 80

Gem-Aton, 52

Golenischeff, W., on Odyssey
and Egyptian tales, 221 ff

Golenischeff collection, 210

Good and Evil, 74, 97, 145;
conflict, 77, 192-193

Goodwin, 274

Gournah, temple of, 3, 9

Greek interpretation, of Osir-
jan myth, 99, 102; of Egyp-
tian tales, 218

Greeks, interest in Egyptian
language, 251 ff.

Gsit, son of Thotmes I, 13

Guignes, Joseph de, 257

H

Hall of the Double Justice, 120

Hapi, a god, 69

Hapousenb, high priest of
Amon, 33, 38, 39, 44

Hathor, 4, 9, 30, 35

Hatshopsitu, Queen, 8 ff.;
tomb, 8, 9, 38; name not
in state archives or on monu-
ments, 10, 15, 29, 39; contest
with the Thotmes, 11 ff.;
heir to throne. 12; marriage,
14; joint ruler with Thotmes

286

Hatshopsitu—Continued
III, 14; assumes royal titles,
17; builds temple, 17; birth
portrayed, 17 ff.; divine
origin, 18-22; crowned by
gods, 22, 24, 26; enthroned,
23 ff., 27; royal names, 24;
endeavours to conceal her
sex, 28, 29; meaning of
name, 29; dethroned, 30;
recovers kingdom, 31-34;
sends embassy to Punt, 35;
mortal remains, 38; fore-
runner of clever women
rulers, 40

Hawk, goddess, 80°

Heaven, Egyptians’ idea of,

117

Helbig, on relation of Egyptian
art to Homeric poems, 229,
231, 247, 248

Heliopolis, 52, 53; temple, 54

Heliopolitan priesthood, 52, 53

Hermonthis, temple, 54

Herodotus, on Osirian rites
at Sais, 78, 93

Hieroglyphica of Horapollon,
translated by Philippus, 252

Hieroglyphics, 250 ff.; demotic,
251, 253, 259, 260; hieratic,
253; cyriologic and symbolic,
254; determinative charac-
ters, 257; Champollion’s
method of deciphering, 262
ff.; phonetic, 268

Hincks, Edward, 271

Holy Vigil, Mysteries of the,
180-192

Homer and Egypt, 207 eke:
borrows from Egyptian folk-
lore, 220 ff.; influenced by
Egyptian art, 230

Homeric Bards, influenced by
Egyptian art, 248

Homeric poems, influence of
Oriental tradition upon, 217
ff.; analogies to Egyptian
pictures, 231-244

Horace, Odes, 130

Horapollon, Hieroglyphica,
2523 255

Index

Horus, son of Osiris, crowns
Hatshopsitu, 26; prayers to,
60; how represented, 62,
69, 162; wars, 77; his part in
Osirian rites, 79, 80, 86, 88

Horus Appollo, see Horapollon

Horrack, de, 274

Hyksos, 8, 43

al

Talou, Fields of, 117, 219

Iliad, psychostasy in, 122 ff;
description of rural scenes
compared with Egyptian
pictures, 231-246

Immortality, tog ff.; Egyp-
tians’ belief in, 113 ff., 118

Inscriptions, at Deir-el-Bahari,
8-10, 18, 22, 28; at Karnak,
9, II, 31, 43; at Denderah,
173; at El Kab, 232; in
Nakhti’s tomb, 240; on Ro-
setta Stone, 259, 268; at
Philz, 262

L'Institut d’Egypte, founded,
258

Iouaa, father of Tii, 46, 47

Iseum of Pompeii, 154 ff.; de-
scription, 155-156;

Isiac temples in Europe, 176

Isiacs, devotees of Isis, 150;
daily services, 158-168; fes-
tivals, 168 initiation,
175-192; ethical standard,
189-190; ascetics, 197

Isis, sister-wife of Osiris, 72;
prayers to, 60; mourning
and quest for Osiris, 75 ff.,
79; institutes Osirian rites,
78; lamentations, 81-82;
broods over body of Osiris,
84; Mysteries of, 148 ff.;
cause of popularity, 149,
150; worship of, spreads to
Greece and Italy, 150, 196;
temples at Rome, 152, 153;
temple, 154-158; temple at
Beneventum, 157; statue
at Pompeii, 163; statue at
Cadiz, 166; temple at Nemi,

Index

Isis—Continued
166; vespers of, 166; in-
fluence upon Roman world,
195, 197

UJ

Jaffa, 209, 210

~ Jomard, 258

Judgment, Last, in Avesta, 134,
144; in Christianity and
among Semites, 138, 140;
in Koran, 142

Judgment of the dead, 144;
tradition in Egypt, 121, 139
ff., 146; Latin poets on, 130;
in Avesta, 132-134; in Vedas,
135, 145; in Buddhism, 136;
individual, I40, 141; by
Mazdean test, 142, by psy-
chostasy, 141

Justice, tribunals of, 119, 125,
126, 129; development of,
144; theme of Roman poets,
189

K
Ka, the, “corporeal soul,”’
1s, 05
Karnak, temple of, 9, II, 31,
33, 43
Kedem, 200

Kepni-Gebli-Gebel, name for
Byblos, 203, 204

Kharou, 205

Khnoum, a god, 69

Khnoumou, the divine potter,

20

Khonsu, god, 208

Khounaton, meaning of name,
50; philosophy, 62 ff. See
also Amenophis IV.

Khounaton’s Hymn, 55-58;

new concepts and _ senti-
ments, 59
Khoutaton, the modern El-

Amarna, 52, 55
Khoutaton school of art, 66
Kircher, study of Coptic lan-

guage, 250, 257

287

L

Landscape gardening, 7

Latin poets, on judgment and
tribunals of justice, 130, 131,
189

Lebanon, forests of, 205

Leemans, Conrad, 271

Legitimist party in Egypt, 16,

33
Lenormant, Charles, 271
Lepsius, K. R., 271, 272
Letronne aided Champollion,

263

Lhate, Nestor, 271

Life, Egyptian’s idea of, 110

Lotan, 202

Lotanou, 202, 205

Louvre, the, laboratory for
Egyptology, 270, 273

Lucas, Paul, 25

Lucian of Samosata, Dialogues
of the Dead, 131

Lucilius Labienus, 157

Luxor, temple of, 42, 43

M

Mahomet, doctrine of the Last
Judgment, 142

Mait, a goddess, 120, 121

Mariette, Auguste, excava-
tions of, I, 273

Maspero, 102

Massaouah, 34

Mazdean test of the bridge,
133, 142, 143

Medinet-Habou, 3

Memphis, temple of, 54

MerirA, high priest of Aton, 53

Mommsen, on papyri, 278

Moon, legends of, 87, 102, 107

Mout, goddess, 49

Moutemoud, Queen, 42

Mummification, purpose of,
MA, Tae

N

Naharaina, legends of, 207,
208

288

Nakhti, tomb of, pictures in,
233, 234, 236, 238-241, 244

Navigium Isidis, festival, 165,
170, 175

Naville, Ed., excavations of,
1,2

Neferoura, daughter of Hat-
shopsitu, 33

Nehsi, guardian of royal seal,
33, 35, 39

Neit, goddess, 18

Nemi, temple of Isis, 166

Nephthys, sister of Osiris, 78,
84; lamentations, 81, 82

Niebuhr, K., 258 ‘

Nile, the, 69, 101, 102; legen-
‘dary cause of overflow, 106

Norden, 258

Nouit, goddess, 71; prayers
to, 60

Nubia, campaigns in, 31; tri-
bute, 43

O

Odyssey, idea of tribunal of
justice in, 124; compared
with an Egyptian tale, 220-
229; and Sindbad the Sailor,

229

“Opening of the Mouth,” a
magic rite, 112

Oriental source of Egyptian
and Homeric tales, 229

Oriental tradition, influence of,
on Homeric poems, 217 ff.

Orphic rites, 151

Osirian death, meaning and
purpose, 90, 95, 96, 185

Osirian rebirth, 83, 85, 86,
186, 187

Osirian rites instituted by Isis,
78; performed as a drama,
79 ff.; performed for all the
gods, 90; performed for
men, 91; meaning of, for
man, 93-95; interpretations,
99-108

Osiris, 101; Hymn and pray-
ers to, 60; passion of, 69-108,
158 ff., 169, 171 ff. 175; ap-

Index

pearance, 69; earthly life, 70;
venerated by Greeks, 71;
teacher of men, 72~73; be-
neficent god, 74; victim of
his brother’s plot, 74 ff.;
mourned by Isis, 75; resusci-
tated, 78 ff.; resurrection of,
represented, 83, 85-87, 94,
106, 186, 187; flight of soul,
87; life preserved, 88-89;
King of two Egypts, 89;
festival of, 92; nature of
sacrifice, 95, 97, 98, 108;
supper served to, 97; affini-
ties with lunar god, 107; per-
sonification of Good, 192

Ouazmes, 12

Ounnefer, the ‘‘Good Being,”’

74
Ousirniri, King, 2
Ovid, on judgment, 130

2
Paheri, 232; tomb of, pictures

in, 237

Palestine in XIIth and XVIIIth
dynasties, 203, 204

Pamyles, annunciation to, 71

Paradise, ideas of, 114,116,117,
190, 220

Parihu, lord of the land of
Punt, 36

Pharaohs, sons of the god Ra,
11; diplomatic correspond-
ence of, 278

Phila, bas-reliefs, 84

Pheenicians, relations
Egypt, 215

Phenicians and the Odyssey,
by V. Bérard, 218

Phtah, hymns to, 61, 64

Phtahhetep, tomb of, pictures
in, 241, 243, 245

Phtahmes, offices held, 44

Pindar, on tribunal of justice,
125

Plato, on judgment and justice,
129, 145

Plato, Apology of Socrates, 126

Plato, Gorgias, 126-128

with

Index

Plutarch, on Osirian legend,
78, 99-101, 104

Pocoke, 258

Pompeii, temple of Isis, 154-
156; statue of Isis, 163

Proteus, Egyptian, 218, 219

Psychostasy in Egypt, 120-122;
in the Ilad, 122; in Aineid,
123; inAvesta, 133; in Budd-
hism, 137; and Christianity,

141

Punt, land of, incense trees,
7, 9, 37; expedition to, 9, 33,
34 ff., 39

Q
Quibell, Mr., 203
R

RA, visible form of, 51, 62.
See also Amon-R&

Ra-Harmakhis, 4, 52, 53, 62

Renouf, Peter le Page, 274

Ramesseum, 3, 9

Religious poetry of the XVIIIth
dynasty, 59

Retribution, moral, 109 ff.

Rhadamanthus, 126, 128, 219

Ririt, a god, 69

Rituals, Egyptian, 80, 88, 97

Rosellini, 271

Rosetta Stone,
259, 268

Rougé, Viscount Emmanuel de,

272, 273, 274
S)

inscriptions,

Sacy, Silvestre de, 260, 266

Sais, festivals at, 93

Scepticism, among Egyptians,
118, 119

Sebek, a god, 69

Sekhit, a god, 69

Selkit, goddess, 18

Semneh, temple of, 15

Senmout, architect of temple
of Deir-el-Bahari, 3, 7, 33,

352 39

289

Senofri, 205
Senousenb, mother of Thotmes

er?

Serapeum of Alexandria, 154-
155, 273

Serapis, 148, 161, 195

Setep sa, magic, 23

Seth-Typhon, 101, 162; plot
against Osiris, 74 ff.; per-
sonification of Evil, 192

Shou, a god, 69, 71

Sindbad the Sailor, Seven Voy-
ages of, compared with
Odyssey and an Egyptian
tale, 229

Sinouhit, his adventures in
Tonou, 200-202

Smendes, King of Tanis, 211,
21

Solar Barge, 117

Souakim, 34

Sphinx, the, 256

“Spiritual soul,’ 115 ff.

Stabel-Antar, chapel of, 9

Stoics, on judgment, 130

Stromateis of Clement of Alex-
andria, 255

“Sublime of the Sublime,”
temple, 2, 7

Syria, expeditions into, 39;
tribute of, 43

ae

Tafnouit, a god, 69

Temple of the Sun, 2

Theban Kings of XVIIIth
dynasty, 43

Theban school of art, 65

Thebes, gods of, 22

Thebes of the Hundred Gates,
48, 73; temple, 42, 54

Thot, 69, 78, 162; hymns to,
61; god of arts and of letters,
73; wars, 77; his part in
Osirian rites, 79, 87; func-
tion, III

Thotmes, I, of XVIIIth dyn-
asty, 8, 10; name on monu-
ments, 10, 29, 30; birth and
marriage, 12; children, 12;

290

Thotmes—Continued
interloper, 14; enthrones Hat-
shopsitu, 22, 23, 27; joint
ruler with Thotmes II, 31,
32; death, 31; his mummy
found, 38; conquests, 43

Thotmes II, succeeds Thot-
mes I, 10, 14; parentage, I2,
13; name on monuments, I0,
14, 30; joint ruler with
Thotmes I, 31, 32; joint
ruler with Thotmes III,
31; death, 31

Thotmes III, name on monu-
ments, I0, 15, 29, 39; parent-
age, 13, 22; joint ruler with
Hatshopsitu, 14, 15, 32;
enthronement, 15, 16, 22;
claims to throne, 16, 28;
subordinate to Hatshopsitu,
27, 28, 32, 39; dethroned,
30; joint ruler with Thotmes
II, 31; recalls Hatshopsitu,
32, 33; revenge, 39; expedi-
tions into Syria, 39; con-
quests, 43

Thoutii, financier, 33, 35, 39,
207

Tii, Queen, 48; wife of Ameno-
phis III, 46; parentage, 47

Tombos, stela of, 205

Tombs, Egyptian, art in, 231 ff

Tonou, land of, 200-203

Touaa, 46, 47

Toutankhamon, 50, 67

Travels of an Egyptian, The,
208-210

Index

Tyre, 209
U

Unamonu, travels of, 211-215
Ungarelli, 271
Ureus, goddess, 80

V

Varouna, 135

Villiers, de, 258

Virgil, Aneid, on judgment,
130

WwW
Wilkinson, Sir John Gardner,

271
Winckelmann, J. J., 257
Women’s rights, question of,
13

We

Yama, 135, 137

Young, Dr. Thomas, 260, 261;
his theory, 262, 263; con-
clusions, 266

Z

Zakkalas, pirates, 214, 215

Zaouit-el-Meitin, tombs at, 235

Zerkarbaal, Prince of Byblos,
212, 213, 214

Zoéga, Georg, 257, 262

At Selection from the
Catalogue of

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

we

Complete Catalogues sent

on application

In the Time of the
Pharaohs

By Alexandre Moret

Author of ‘‘ Kings and Gods of Egypt ’’
Sub-Director of the Musée Guimet, Professor of Egypt-
ology in l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes

Translated by Mme. Moret

Svo. With 16 Illustrations. $2.00 net. (By
mail, $2.25)

M. Moret gives in this volume a non-technical, popular
account of the ancient Egyptian civilization and of some
of the difficulties that present themselyes to the present-
day investigator. He gives information about the building
methods of the people of old, about the diplomatic corre-
spondence carried on by the Egyptian foreign office with the
Asiatic countries over which Egypt exercised a kind of
protectorate, about the origin of the Egyptian nation and
dramatic developments in its early history, about the people
of the Stone Age and the relics they have left behind, about
the evolution of the pyramid and the close relation of religion
and art in Egypt, about that quaint and interesting product
of superstition, The Book of the Dead, and finally about the
place of magic in Egyptian thought and practice.

The volume should be of service to the ever-increasing
number of tourists visiting Egypt, putting them in touch
with many interesting phases of the civilization of old.

G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York London

Authoritative Works on Egypt

Egyptian Archeology

By G. Maspero

Translated from the French

By Amelia B. Edwards
New edition, revised by the author with the co-
operation of Kate Bradbury, Secretary
Egyptian Exploration Society

229 illustrations. Crown 8vo. Net, $2.25

‘© A rich and enjoyable book, in every way satisfactory and
fascinating. . . . It is delightful to find frankness, ac-
curacy, and scholarship united in the production of this work,
which makes the humanity of vanished Egypt live again.”

The |
Story of Ancient Egypt

By Prof. Geo. Rawlinson
No. 14 in The Story of the Nations Series
Crown 8vo. Net, $1.50. Half leather, net, $1.75
‘* Tt is the work of a firm-handed scholar, who is sure of his
facts, modest in his generalizations and surmises, full of that
local color that comes of personal travel and inspection, and
who is withal a ready and readable writer.”"—V. VY. Critic.
‘“ The book reads like a romance, so interesting is the por-
trayal of that people who dwelt in Egypt in the long ago.”
Toledo Blade.

New York G. P. Putnam’s Sons London

“The Most Brilliant Historical Work of Years”

By Guglielmo Ferrero

The
Greatness and Decline of Rome

Library Edition. 5 volumes, 8vo, uncut edges, maroon
cloth, $12.50 net per set. Separately, each $2.50 net.

Student's Edition, 5 volumes, 8vo, trimmed edges, blue
cloth, $8.00 net per set. Separately, each $1.75 net.

Vol. I. The Empire Builders.

Vol. II. Julius Cesar.

Vol. III. The Fall of an Aristocracy.

Vol. IV. Rome and Egypt.

Vol. V. The Republic of Augustus.

Uniform with ‘* The Greatness and Decline of Rome.”
Characters and Events of Roman
History

From Cesar to Nero (60 B.C.-70 A.D.)
Authorized Translation by Frances Lance Ferrero
8vo. With Portrait. $2.50 net

* Fis largeness of vision, his sound scholarship, his sense of proportion,
his power to measure life that has been by his observation of life that is—his
possession of the true historical sense. . . . He is a bold, not to say
audacious, proponent of new theories and conclusions wholly at variance from |
those of his innumerable predecessors in this most industriously cultivated of j
all historic fields. The translation is competent and more than that, and the
history is good reading throughout. There are no dry pages.”—W, V, Times.
Send for complete descriptive circular

New York G,. P. Putnam’s Sons _ London

HISTORIC STATES OF ITALY

A Series of Histories of the Italian States.
Each State is treated as a separate entity; and
the fulness of the treatment is determined by
the importance of the State in Italian or
European history.

These narrations are histories in the widest sense of the
term. They describe not only the political life of the people.
but treat also of the geographical conditions which influence
their temperament, and affect those social and commercial
impulses which in turn create or modify their political move-
ments. At the same time, the history of the art and litera-
ture of each State is briefly told.

MILAN: The House of Sforza.
Illustrated. 8vo. $3.50 met. by C. M, Ady
PERUGIA. Ly William Heywood

Illustrated. 8vo, $3.50 mez.

VERONA. 2y 4. . Allen

Illustrated. 8vo. $3.50 zed.

In Preparation:
NAPLES: The House of Anjou.
Mr. G. Baskerville
NAPLES: The House of Aragon.
Mr. E. C. Cleveland-Stevens
MILAN: The House of Visconti.
Mr. L. Stampa
FERRARA. Mr. Horatio F. Brown
MANTUA. Jéiss MZ. I. Robertson
BOLOGNA. Mr. £. S. Lyttel
PARMA and PIACENZA. Jfiss B. A. Lees
THE HOUSE OF SAVOY. Mrs. H. M. Vernon
PISA. Mr. William Heywood

Send for Descriptive Circular

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

NEW YORK CONDON

rereleta tats ieies)
sie ete

ieee?

at Jereieiee
tists aaie ia
Heaths